Niger attack: Why was the US military there?
What happened in Niger? That has become the inconvenient question for our president whose botched phone call with a fallen soldier's widow may have opened a messy can of worms about our military involvements in nasty global hot spots.
The president's feud with a hyper-partisanized Florida congresswoman was about more than a clumsily worded condolence call.
Now we're wondering what on earth were our soldiers doing in an African hell hole? We all know freedom isn't free, but why should these brave men have paid with their lives for vague and nebulous war authorizations that have clearly overstayed their welcome and overstepped their bounds.
Lawmakers in D.C. from both parties have tried in vain to sunset the AUMF's that weren't meant to cover these common incursions that have nothing to do with their original aim. It's not just freaky, deaky Libertarians who are calling for new boundaries to a war on terror that has evolved into something that desperately requires new parameters.
Even Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee wants answers that hopefully stretch beyond the particulars of this tragedy.
If our government is going to put people in harm's way, it better be for our direct benefit and not part of a dangerous, Half-baked patchwork that does nothing to keep us safer and compromises the lives and liberty of those who are charged with protecting ours. Gum flappers who are calling this trump's Benghazi are jumping the gun, we hardly have the facts to make *that* kind of gross assessment.
However, this administration needs to be held accountable by not overextending our military for a nameless war we have no chance of winning, especially when it's under-fought in the shadows with virtually no oversight.