Fog of war in the time of the Tweeter

Ever wondered what people serving in the U.S. armed forces make of the incoherent leadership they are getting from the President? Here's military reporter Jeff Schogol trying to make sense of what he gets from the Pentagon.

In past wars, it was possible to mark the U.S. military's positions with flags on paper maps. But we live in the age of Twitter, and since the commander in chief seems to be visited by the Good Idea Fairy every 15 minutes, there is no way to have an updated map of where U.S. forces are.

With regards to Syria, the U.S. military isn't leaving. It's repositioning forces because the mission has changed from fighting ISIS to protecting the oil. (This also may make the first time a sitting president has not tried to camouflage sending troops to protect oil by claiming the United States was liberating oppressed people.)

... Every time Trump tweets about the military, the Defense Department has to pretend the president's latest missive is all part of a wider plan that has been properly thought out ahead of time.

By giving as little information as possible, the Pentagon hopes to avoid revealing that it is actually reacting on the fly to try to make Trump's latest great idea not end in a total disaster.

Schogol does point out that the Obama administration was also often not very transparent about troop deployments. The Pentagon is used to these games and resents them....Now Trump is crowing that U.S. forces have killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. The guy will certainly not be missed if the report is accurate. That's a real success. But given the number of times that the U.S. has reported the demise of various al Qaeda and ISIS leaders only to have them turn up the next week, a more disciplined leader than Tweeter in Chief might have waited for all the evidence.

A Defense Department official said before the president’s announcement that there was a strong belief — “near certainty” — that Mr. al-Baghdadi was dead, but that a full DNA analysis was not complete. The official said that with any other president, the Pentagon would wait for absolute certainty before announcing victory. But Mr. Trump was impatient to get the news out ...

Democrats probably don't have to worry that killing Baghdadi will give Trump a big political boost outside his base. Killing Osama bin Laden never did much for Obama's standing either.

People here get worried by the school shooting next door or the white supremacist murdering our neighbors. Trump isn't doing anything about that while Democratic candidates struggle to figure out how to reduce the armaments in private hands in this country.