I’ve always thought that “s*** rolls downhill.”
I learned it in the Army a few decades ago. When things went badly — which they did on occasion — the brass would make the rest of us down the line pay for the mistakes they might have made.
U.S. Sen. John McCain, though, sees it differently … I reckon.
He’s now blaming President Obama’s policies for the terror attack in Orlando, Fla., although his initial statement on that matter seemed to suggest that the president was even more directly responsible than that.
Sen. McCain more or less backed away from the statement, saying that the president’s “direct” responsibility is more a function of his decision to pull U.S. combat troops out of Iraq.
The absence of U.S. forces in Iraq, McCain said, brought about the birth of the Islamic State, which then spread to Syria and which has spread even farther into the Middle East — and which is now capable of striking the United States.
My head is spinning over this assertion.
McCain now says he “misspoke.” He didn’t take any of it back, though.
Look, the monster who slaughtered those 49 people in Orlando did it on his own. He reportedly was “inspired” by ISIS propaganda, but the American-born individual acted on his own in a fit of rage over something that has yet to be determined fully.
The blame game is getting tiresome. Sure, Democrats have taken no small amount of pleasure in ascribing blame to President Bush for all manner of things — including the Iraq War and its aftermath. It’s wrong to keep trying to pass the blame around to someone else.
The Huffington Post, though, reported this tidbit: “In 2010, McCain actually referred to it as a ‘victory’ when Obama pulled troops out of Iraq, though he said President George W. Bush deserved credit for the moment, too.”
Let’s get real here. Let’s also deal in the present day with these crises as they arise.
Laying blame on presidents of the other party — be they Democrat or Republican — only makes for snappy patter.
Oh … the politics of it all.