Thread by @PhilKlay

A story about Susan Rice

I attended an event in DC in May of 2015. By this point, after announcing with great fanfare America’s withdrawal from the war, cutting troops and cutting economic assistance in half, Obama had started quietly reintroducing special operators...

ramping up airstrikes, and all the while denying that any of this counted as “boots on the ground.” Some vets started joking that special operators must wear combat slippers.

At the event, Ambassador Rice told a room full of active duty military, including several severely injured soldiers, some missing legs, or ears that were burned off in IED blasts, “One of our proudest accomplishments as an administration was ending the wars in Iraq.”

Someone in the audience snorted in laughter. (It was clearly an administration talking point. The next month the President would brag at a DSCC fundraiser, “We’ve ended two wars.”)

I was dumbstruck.

Anyway, after the event I remember chatting with a soldier with one partially functional limb who was full of rage that she’d lie to our faces.

I always think about him when I see her holding forth. And it reminds me of the importance of Congress holding the executive accountable and reasserting it’s role in war policy.

Something I think about as I watch the current crop of presidential candidates.