Trump’s handling of the Ryan Owens affair was contemptibly cynical.

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The problem isn’t that Trump honored Carryn Owens at a moment of terrible grief, or that he spoke movingly of her husband’s death. All that was altogether appropriate. Rather, the problem is that he did this after trying to evade any responsibility for what happened, and after the White House cast any criticism of his handling of it as an insult to Ryan’s legacy. In this sense, the entire story raises serious doubts about Trump’s decision-making on matters of national security, and it may be a grim preview of what’s to come.

Let’s review the facts. The Yemen raid on Jan. 29 was the first military action of Trump’s presidency. The idea for raiding this compound, partly in pursuit of the leader of AQAP leader (who wasn’t there) was presented to Trump over dinner one night, and according to NBC News, military representatives “told Trump that they doubted that the Obama administration would have been bold enough to try it,” which was apparently good enough to get him to sign off.

Then almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The militants knew they were coming, possibly tipped off by the increased sound of drones in the area. The team encountered stronger resistance than it expected. A couple of dozen civilians were killed (we don’t know exactly how many, but it could be as many as 30), including children, among them an 8-year-old American girl. Owens was killed. A $75 million Osprey aircraft was damaged in a “hard landing” and had to be destroyed lest it fall into AQAP’s hands.

We all know that if it had been Hillary Clinton who ordered the Yemen raid, there would already be multiple congressional investigations underway and subpoenas would be falling like rain. That’s one thing the White House doesn’t have to worry about. But they decided that the way to handle questions about the botched raid was to use Ryan Owens as a shield. The raid was a terrific success, said spokesman Sean Spicer, and “anyone that would suggest it’s not a success does a disservice to the life of Chief Ryan Owens.”

But the questions, and the criticisms, kept coming, most pointedly from Owens’ father, himself a veteran. “Don’t hide behind my son’s death,” Bill Owens told the Miami Herald, after refusing to meet with President Trump at Dover Air Force Base.

That brings us to the day of Trump’s speech to Congress. With Carryn Owens invited to the speech and the tribute to her husband being written, the President went on “Fox and Friends” that morning and passed the buck for the raid, blaming it on the Obama administration and the military. “This was a mission that was started before I got here. This was something they wanted to do,” he said. “They came to see me, they explained what they wanted to do ? the generals ? who are very respected, my generals are the most respected that we’ve had in many decades, I believe. And they lost Ryan.”

Once again, imagine if Hillary Clinton were president, had ordered an operation that went terribly wrong, and then tried to blame it on the military. Republicans would have absolutely lost their minds with rage, and they would have been right. When you’re president, you don’t get to send American servicemembers into harm’s way in an operation you obviously didn’t understand, and then when it all goes wrong and one of those servicemembers is killed, claim that it was somebody else’s fault.

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