User:Buster7/Commander-in-Chief Forum, 2016

'''The first of possibly many future Forums took place during the unique (to say the least) 2016 election cycle. There will be another, the second, in 2020. This is a work in progress. Perhaps it will be best to put some distance of time between the event and the November election. B7 10/26/16'''

"I have a plan"
TRUMP:''I may love what the generals come back with. I will convene… I have a plan. But I want to be—I don’t want to—look. I have a very substantial chance of winning. Make America great again. We’re going to make America great again. I have a substantial chance of winning. If I win, I don’t want to broadcast to the enemy exactly what my plan is''. WSJtonedeaf

two of the vets grilled her on emails
The moderator, NBC’s Matt Lauer (who proved himself unready from Moment 1), grilled Hillary Clinton on her emails—entirely appropriate, but then two of the veterans in the audience also grilled her on the emails. (Were the questions screened?) By the time Lauer got around to asking her about the Iran nuclear deal and she started to explain the deal’s context, he interrupted and urged her to make her answer quick. He did that a couple of times. SLATETRUMPLIED

It was GWB
Trump castigated President Obama for setting “a certain date” for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, which he implied gave rise to the chaos currently enveloping that country. Lauer might have pointed out that it was George W. Bush who signed the Status of Forces Agreement that set the terms of withdrawal, not Obama. But no. Lauer also failed to follow up on two other Trump comments that would have sunk the candidacies of any other major-party candidate for president. WSJtonedeaf In a rambling answer to a question about Iraq, Trump noted (again) that the biggest mistake made in Iraq was that the United States did not “take the oil.” He then observed: “They have—people don’t know this about Iraq, but they have among the largest oil reserves the world, in the entire world.” Then, in what was ostensibly an answer to a question about ISIS, Trump observed that under President Obama, “the generals have been reduced to rubble.”Lauer didn’t press him on any of it. WSJtonedeaf

An opportunity missed
Wednesday’s “Commander-in-Chief Forum” between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump showed how out of touch America’s leadership is with the nation’s military. The televised interviews were an opportunity for the candidates to audition for leader of the armed forces. What followed were stale discussions that answered few of the questions troops actually have. Though the forum was held before a group of veterans, the questions asked and selectively fielded from the audience put America’s civil-military divide on full display. WSJtonedeaf

their fixation on the Iraq war
Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump and NBC host Matt Lauer touched on this topic four times.(How to win the war on terror, by contrast, was asked exactly once)

I built a great company
Lauer put some challenging questions to Donald Trump as well, asking, for instance, what in his experience made him qualified to be commander-in-chief. He replied, “I built a great company, I’ve been all over the world, I’ve dealt with foreign countries. … I have great judgment, I know what’s going on”—saying (and being asked) nothing about his company’s four bankruptcies, the fleecing of vendors, or the fundamental difference between running a business (where there’s a clear profit-loss tally) and running a country (where there are competing views of what the goals should be).

men and women in harm’s way
Another sign that politicians and journalists are unfamiliar with military life is what Mr. Lauer called the “emotional burden” of putting “American men and women in harm’s way,” which was discussed six different times. Troops don’t like war more than other people, and their families certainly abhor it most. But war plays a more complex role in the lives of troops than the hackneyed “boots on the ground” versus “war weariness” debate we often have. WSJtonedeaf