AP analysis described as ‘thoughtless’

The News-Herald ran an opinion analysis on Aug. 23 titled, “Murky plan for promised victory,” authored by Julie Pace and Ken Thomas of the Associated Press. This was a rather thoughtless editorial; it fell more into the category of what we called, as kids, “piling-on.”

It proved to be a not-wellreasoned criticism of President Trump. I’m not a big fan of Trump’s character or personality, but I support many of his professed policy positions and I’m not prone to saying that since he’s done some things wrong, everything he does is wrong. Apparently these pundits are.

Criticizing him for not giving specifics about how he plans to attack the enemy (ISIS and alQaida) and calling it “murky” is, charitably, naive or, more likely, blindly partisan. Why don’t we have the generals bring out the battle plan and give it to the news media, show us maps of where the troops are and the planned path to the enemy, and then we could give the names of all of our informants just to prove we have resources.

As I recall, the now president responded during the primary debates to such questions by pointing out that it would be foolish to tell our enemies what we plan to do. If members of the news media did have such information and made it public, that would properly be called treason. Such conduct would far exceed any protection under the First Amendment.

Certainly, not everything that the president has done is right, but Trump was dead right to not reveal any specifics on military plans; contrary to the previous president’s propensity to alert the enemy of the number of troops he intended to send and the timeline for planned withdrawal.

I hope President Trump continues to keep our military plans “murky” and within the circle of our military leaders, and doesn’t subjects our troops to unnecessary risks associated with sharing information with the enemy.

Jerome D. Bennett Madison