Republicans have to stop downplaying the horrific slip in allowing a journalist to gain access to internal communications amongst a half dozen national security titans within the Trump administration discussing attacks on the Houthis in Yemen.
Thankfully, the boneheaded mistake — allowing someone outside the inner circle to, in real time, see and hear about upcoming plans to attack the Houthis — did not result in a setback to the overall mission. But it sure as heck could have, and that’s the scandal. This type of thing must never happen again. An investigation should be undertaken to find out how it happened in the first place.
This enormous blunder, though unintentional, was unfortunately a huge distraction from an otherwise very successful policy initiative by the Trump administration to regain control of navigable waters from the ragtag pirates known as the Houtis.
The big scandal here is that the Biden administration’s risk aversion and weakness allowed these renegade thugs in Yemen to hamper the largest military power on the planet, the United States, from ensuring safety on the waterways that facilitate trade to the rest of the world. Many commercial ships were forced to take longer, more expensive routes to deliver their goods. It was absolutely an embarrassment and a failure on the part of Biden‘s administration to not put the Houthis in their place when they had the opportunity.
One positive that came out of the Signal debacle was the actual conversation amongst Trump‘s agents, which showed a strong willingness to eliminate the Houthi threat.
So which administration would you rather have? The Biden administration that didn’t have a Signal gaffe, yet handed over control of the seas to the Houthis, thereby impacting millions of people around the world, or the Trump administration that had this unfortunate lapse in judgment, yet reopened these navigable waters? We will most assuredly take the latter.