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[itisnotlogical]

Think Reelya meant Trump's saying that it's bad the soldier died, not that the soldier himself was bad.

[Reelya]

Trump's blame for the relative failure of this mission is equivalent to Obama's credit for the successful ride on bin laden's mansion, as in, none.

And it wasn't the first in recent time american special forces took direct action against terrorists in Yemen, Iraq or Syria, so it can hardly point at a dramatic shift in strategy.

If a raid was hastily pushed on the military because the political operatives wanted it, then the failure is in fact the fault of the political operatives

[Wolfhunter107]

I'd like to see your source for those claims.

The reports are not indicating there was any military objective at the location.

The sources say that three senior Al Qaeda leaders and 11 other Al Qaeda members were killed. That's a military objective right there.

If there was one hit, Trump would be highlighting that fact because it would justify a dead American. Trump is talking about how bad the dead American is, but he's deliberately avoiding mentioning anything about what strategic objectives this raid actually accomplised.

In other words, you have no sources, and are just drawing conclusions based on pure conjunure , and not even that supports your claim that there was no planning.

[smjjames]

Trump's blame for the relative failure of this mission is equivalent to Obama's credit for the successful ride on bin laden's mansion, as in, none.

And it wasn't the first in recent time american special forces took direct action against terrorists in Yemen, Iraq or Syria, so it can hardly point at a dramatic shift in strategy.

If a raid was hastily pushed on the military because the political operatives wanted it, then the failure is in fact the fault of the political operatives.

We don't know if it actually was hastily done because the political operatives wanted it to be.

[muldrake]

Basically this event has been born frum hubris. Trump wants a an early military victory to make him popular (it's a well worn strategy that works), and he believes the hype about invincibility of US elite forces, so he figures an elite forces raid is going to look good (as in Obama vs Osama) so he's asked the military to pick a target, and someone's house where a political affiliate of a rebel group lives, well those are your typical "easy targets" because the intelligence people usually know where a number of such people live.

As much as dramatic events like this make good fuel for rhetoric, it's actually hasty to blame this specifically on Trump.

The degree to which events like this are politicized doesn't actually help breed better strategy.

Look how Bush's absolute failure to hunt Osama bin Laden, and his open statements that he didn't even care about Osama, were basically ignored by the press, while Obama's actual successful killing of bin Laden was also similarly ignored. 

All of this means nothing.

[Reelya]

The Americans had to blow up their own plane that landed badly. I really don't think that was specifically a contingency that actually got planned for. They didn't have enough forces in place to pull this off and deal with all contingencies in other words. Equipment failure is something you plan for, especially expensive equipment such as miltary aircraft.

[PTTG??]

What was the name of that Embassy that Republicans said Hillary personally blew up herself?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Consulate not Embassy, and Benghazi. (Benghazi Benghazi)

[Strife26]

The Americans had to blow up their own plane that landed badly. I really don't think that was specifically a contingency that actually got planned for. They didn't have enough forces in place to pull this off and deal with all contingencies in other words. Equipment failure is something you plan for, especially expensive equipment such as miltary aircraft.

Yep. Loss and self-destruction of an aircraft or vehicle is not something that is planned for at any stage in American military doctrine. Everyone knows that Ospreys are very reliable and recovery of aircraft in the middle of Yemen is a trivial operation.

 

[smjjames]

while Obama's actual successful killing of bin Laden was also similarly ignored. 

Uh, no it wasn't, it was the complete opposite. Outside the US though, I can see how it might not have gotten as much attention as it did here.

The Americans had to blow up their own aircraft that landed badly. I really don't think that was specifically a contingency that actually got planned for. They didn't have enough forces in place to pull this off and deal with all contingencies in other words. Equipment failure is something you plan for, especially expensive equipment such as miltary aircraft.

Source on that? Also, blowing up or disabling equipment is pretty standard.

What was the name of that Embassy that Republicans said Hillary personally blew up herself?

Benghazi consulate? Don't know why you're bringing it up, and I don't remember if it had any specific name.

[Reelya]

The Americans had to blow up their own plane that landed badly. I really don't think that was specifically a contingency that actually got planned for. They didn't have enough forces in place to pull this off and deal with all contingencies in other words. Equipment failure is something you plan for, especially expensive equipment such as miltary aircraft.

Yep. Loss and self-destruction of an aircraft or vehicle is not something that is planned for at any stage in American military doctrine. Everyone knows that Ospreys are very reliable and recovery of aircraft in the middle of Yemen is a trivial operation.

When you're forced to blow up your own aircraft when you in fact had complete air superiority until a week ago ... that's not normal expectations for loss of aircraft and vehicles. Sure, you expect that some vehicles will be lost. You don't do a proper planning mission and one small thing goes wrong, then you have to blow up a perfectly good aircraft that you own. If the thing was completely useless, they would have had little reason to expend resource on an airstrike to blow up the downed Osprey. So that shows it was in good enough condition that the rebels could appropriate it and fix it.

[Starver]

(Loadsaposts whilst writing.  Look a dozen or so posts back to what I was originally replying to...)

It was likely a plan developed in Obama's time.   There are always plans sitting in a developed (or half-developed) state, because if you don't have plans (of one sort or another) for a wide range of contingencies, you're going to be at a disadvantage when something happens and you can only start from scratch...

I'm betting this plan was pre-Trump, but probably an embryonic and/or 'generic' assault plan, with plenty of fine-tuning needed to fit to even the template scenario to the latest updates of intel.  If it was ever seen by Obama, he would have understood it as such.  Maybe Trump did, too, but I suspect that (either way) it arose as "what kind of operation can you do for me, within a week, as a showpiece of <this kind of thing>" and was then hastily fleshed out with greater or lesser pressure from the top in order to set the wheels in motion.  And that left it vulnerable to errors.  He also now couldn't even not announce it as having happened (deepest regrets to the relatives, yadda yadda, your son died for his country, yadda yadda, but we cannot reveal the details of the operation...) because the PR is the thing about it. Military value? Less than the need to say something (however unsmoothly) happened...

[smjjames]

@Starver, yeah, pretty much the only reason we're even hearing about it is that a US soldier died.

[Strife26]

The Americans had to blow up their own plane that landed badly. I really don't think that was specifically a contingency that actually got planned for. They didn't have enough forces in place to pull this off and deal with all contingencies in other words. Equipment failure is something you plan for, especially expensive equipment such as miltary aircraft.

Yep. Loss and self-destruction of an aircraft or vehicle is not something that is planned for at any stage in American military doctrine. Everyone knows that Ospreys are very reliable and recovery of aircraft in the middle of Yemen is a trivial operation.

When you're forced to blow up your own aircraft when you in fact had complete air superiority until a week ago ... that's not normal expectations for loss of aircraft and vehicles. Sure, you expect that some vehicles will be lost. You don't do a proper planning mission and one small thing goes wrong, then you have to blow up a perfectly good aircraft that you own.

That's so wrong I don't even know where to start. In fact, I don't feel like emptying the Augean Stables today, so I'll just heartily recommend that you read about what deep penetration raids entail. Long story short, it's completely and totally a normal expectation.

[Reelya]

Yeah, that's sort of what I had in mind. Trump comes along and says "give me a target", and then the Pentagon picks a known target. Then they pull out the dossier they keep on each target with all the various proposals and discussions of possible miltary actions that could be taken. I mean, for any one military target there are existing plans all the way from raids to drone attacks up to literally nuking the whole planet. There are in fact written plans for doing everything up to WWIII (and about 100 variants of how to do WWIII). The vast majority of military planning documents never get off paper.

That's so wrong I don't even know where to start. In fact, I don't feel like emptying the Augean Stables today, so I'll just heartily recommend that you read about what deep penetration raids entail. Long story short, it's completely and totally a normal expectation.

I still think it's very poorly conceived. The military target involved here doesn't seem to be worth the escalation of effort that's gone into it. Sure, risk is a thing, but risks only make sense when there's a tangible goal. They've been bombing this site for ages. There were cheaper and better ways to take this site out rather than sending Seal Team Six, which has now cost the US government probably about $100 million dollars to achieve whatever they just did. Which was apparently a success despite not gaining a square inch of control.

Sure, send Seal Team Six to help if there's a column of Yemen military that you're backing up that's going to secure the location. This ... as they did it, achieved nothing in the civil war except to be a high-profile Seal Team Raid^tm.