After ordering US troops to execute a regime change in Panama in 1989, President George H.W. Bush held a press conference at the precise moment the first US casualties were arriving on US soil.
TV networks showed the events on a split screen.
Bush opened the press conference with a joke about keeping things brief because he had a “pain in the neck.”
He was later asked, “Was it really worth it to send people to their deaths to get (Gen. Manuel) Noriega?”
His answer, according to the New York Times, “sounded pained, and he paused often. He said: ‘Every human life is precious. And yet I have to answer, yes, it has been worth it.’”
That’s got to be an honest answer for a president, but it’s not empathetic for a politician. Trump has also suggested there is a calculus to the lives of service members.
“We expect casualties,” Trump warned Americans in an interview last Sunday, “but in the end it’s going to be a great deal for the world.”
By the time H.
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