Points of View

Susan Rice was fried, when the Benghazi talking points she faithfully recited needed to be, and were, corrected one week later.   She did not lie.  The error did no harm.

The killing of Soleimani is different.  Unless, he is totally deranged, Trump knows why he authorized the strike.  So every statement from the administration that Soleimani was behind an imminent threat was a lie, damaging our standing in the world.  A few Republicans have stepped out of line, but in the main they goose-step behind their lying leader.

The new rationale for the killing of an official of a sovereign state is that he was responsible for the killing of Americans.  Yes, we can repeat the litany that Soleimani was a bad man.  But the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia ordered the slicing and dicing of a Washington Post correspondent.  Are we justified in taking him out?

Trump has made it clear that his main concern in the region is oil.  So is Iran so unreasonable, to take the position that the US is an invading force, after the region's resources?  From that perspective Soleimani is a general, with inferior forces, using guerrilla, and admittedly terrorist tactics, to repel an occupying army.

Now let us switch to the Kurdish perspective.  Imagine you are a young Kurd.  Your father died fighting ISIS in support of American interests.  Your brother was killed by the Turks as Trump summarily gave away your land and your home.  You and your mother now live hand to mouth in a refuge camp.  Would you be justified in killing our President, because he was responsible for the death of many of your people, and the loss of your homeland?

Red Meat

Rice may be a starch, but for Republicans the name is red meat.  The story that Susan Rice was unmasking incidentally gathered names of Trump associates was first pushed by Mike Cernovich, recently profiled by '60 Minutes' as a major player in the fake news industry.  One of the listed sources for the story is Joe Digenova, who Rachel Maddow exposed as a long time GOP  provocateur.

Eli Lake, a conservative Bloomberg reporter, adds credence to the story that  Susan Rice unmasked the names of some Trump associates.  Allow me to stifle a yawn.  Requesting unmasking the names of Americans inadvertently gathered when legally surveilling foreign targets was Rice's job as National Security Advisor.  If two Russian diplomats say, "We think we can leverage, 'blank' to lift sanctions," it was her job to unmask the name to get the context.  The suggestion that she systematically requested unmasking of Trump associates is nonsensical.  You don't know who is masked until you unmask.  That precludes Trump centric searches.  Nor is there any allegation that she leaked the material.  She did not use intelligence sources for political purposes.

That dubious distinction falls to the Trump White House.  We now know that heavy intelligence resources have been used to attempt to backup a ridiculous tweet.   No doubt hundreds of hours were spent to find the tidbits leaked to Nunes.

Nor does the Rice distraction in any way vindicate Trump's tweet.  If I say, with no proof, that my neighbor killed a cat, finding out that a mouse died two blocks away is of no moment.

Against the Grain

Skewering Rice is impractical as well as unseemly.  The grains scatter to no good purpose.  The sole consequence of her reliance on intelligence community approved talking points, was that for one week, some members of the public thought that Benghazi was part of the spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim video that swept through much of the Muslim world.  As material became correlated and declassified, the misstatements were corrected.

Susan Rice's Sunday show segments had no policy implications, and resulted in neither loss of property, nor loss of life.  Her namesake, Condoleezza Rice, committed a more consequential error, but has been given a non-presidential pardon by Senator McCain.

Condoleezza's pronouncements on Iraq's nuclear capabilities and ambitions, notwithstanding uncertainty in the intelligence community, had far reaching policy implications.  Thousands died and hundreds of billions of dollars were spent. 

If McCain chooses to lead a rabid pack of Republicans, he should go after bigger game.