The Washington Examiner’s Byron York posts this quote by the New York Times’ Ross Douthat, (behind NYT’s paywall) and I take the liberty of reposting it here for the good sense it reflects.
No leading officials were fired over the Iraq/W.M.D. debacle. There were no notable resignations when Barack Obama’s Libya intervention turned that country into a war-torn terrorist haven. No heads rolled when the Afghanistan papers revealed official dishonesty, and Biden’s foreign policy team did not quit after the Afghanistan withdrawal became a bloody rout.
Given that record you can argue that Hegseth or Waltz should resign over operational security failures even if those failures didn’t have tragic consequences—but it is silly to act shocked when they do not.
What a chronicle of screw-ups in two short paragraphs. Such missteps appear to be almost the disgusting norm in DC.
