Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

�

Click here for the Secret Decoder Ring to this issue!

Obama Blows a Call

Rich Galen

Monday March 27, 2011

Click here for an Easy Print Version

I have no idea how all the turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa is going to end up. My fear is, we will have expended another couple of hundreds of billions of dollars and people who don't like us even more than the people in power now (who don't like us) will be in charge and we'll be paying $5.50 for a gallon of regular by September.

I don't have any better suggestions as to what course we should be following than Co-President Hillary Clinton has already decided upon, but I'm pretty sure the first airplane dropping the first bomb would have been from an Islamic nation, not France.

The other thing I would have done would have been to inform the Speaker of the House that I had approved the launching of about 110 Tomahawk missiles before I actually lit the first fuse.

That, according to people close to the House leadership, did not happen. President Obama did not pick up a phone - red or otherwise - to tell Speaker John Boehner he was about to start a war.

Step into the Wayback machine with me as I recount a story from 1998 in which some of the details might be wrong, but the thrust is correct:

Bill Clinton had 'fessed up to the whole Monica thing, and had taken refuge in Martha's Vinyard with the future Co-President and their daughter for what was described by the White House press shop as "family healing time."

That lasted about 36 hours before Clinton came back to Washington and launched an attack on a suspected hideout in which some guy named Osama bin Laden was suspected of hiding out.

My friends on the right went into paroxysms of outrage: Clinton had launched an attack to (a) get away from Hillary, (b) change the national narrative, or (c) both.

I was running GOPAC at the time and got a call from the Speaker of the House telling me to draft a memo to all the talk show hosts saying that he had been briefed on the available intelligence and, while he was not given a vote, was given the courtesy of having been told of the action which was about to take place.

You may remember that in August of 1998 Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, largely because Gingrich was leading the charge to have Clinton impeached, were not exactly on the best of terms.

Nevertheless President Clinton - if he, himself, didn't call Speaker Gingrich - ordered that the Speaker of the House be informed ahead of the action.

Barack Obama did not make a similar call to Speaker Boehner.

In the MULLINGS of August 21, 1998 I wrote this:

The President did not order these attacks to take the pressure off his domestic problems. Period. Consider how long it would have taken to leak, if a White House official had even asked a Pentagon or State Department guy about the possibility of launching an attack. It would have re-defined a "New York minute." Didn't happen. Not in this town. Not at this time.

I don't believe Obama's blowing the call to Boehner was a conscious effort to demonstrate the primacy of the Executive Branch over the Legislative. Obama has Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to do that.

It was part of a far more cynical effort which included going off on a trip to Latin America while American pilots taking off to fly combat missions at the beginning of the Kinetic Miltary Action against Libya.

And don't tell me that he was on that trip and so couldn't reach Speaker Boehner. How many times have we been told 23,217 people have to travel with the President (any President) because he's The President all the time, everywhere. He can place a secure call from Air Force One as easily as he can from the Oval Office.

Obama is so frightened about being tagged with starting another war (while continuing the Afghan campaign and keeping the lights on in Guantanamo) that the geniuses on the White House staff decided to play it cool and make like launching 110 Tomahawks was no big thing.

How many times have you read this: "Obama has ordered the launching of more Tomahawks than all the other Nobel Peace Prize winners combined." Wish I'd have thought of it.

Just as well, actually. I suspect most Americans are far more comfortable having Secretary of State Hillary Clinton negotiating with the French and the Germans over NATO's role than Obama.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: Links to CNN's coverage of Bill Clinton's speech and the immediate aftermath and a link to the MULLINGS referred to above.

Also a rare on-topic Mullfoto and a Catchy Caption of the Day which makes good sense.

Become a
Paid Mullings Subscriber!

(To join the FREE mailing list or to unsubscribe Click Here)

Current Issue | Secret Decoder Ring | Past Issues | Email Rich | Rich Who?