Seemliness in victory

The world is a better and cleaner place because Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead and, because Donald Trump gave the order to put him down, he deserves our gratitude.

Unhappily, his conduct since the raid has been a dispiriting reminder of how utterly unfit he is for the responsibility and power he wields.

When Osama bin Laden was killed, Barack Obama made a late night announcement that lasted about 2-3 minutes. Donald Trump teased the announcement with a tweet and, 12-hours later, made a 48-minutes long speech that thanked Russia for cooperating before he thanked the brave troops that did the job, and lingered indecently over the last squalid minutes of Baghdadi’s life. What is more, he inflated Baghdadi’s importance; ISIS hasn’t controlled anything that could reasonably be described as a state since before Trump took office.

Trump, an insecure showman rather than a self-assured statesman, has a peculiar knack for not knowing when to leave well-enough alone.

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