The Benghazi Gambit That Could Save Obama
During a weekly briefing of Tea Party Patriots local coordinators on Sunday evening, a veteran of the Reagan administration’s national security infrastructure pointed activists to the work of Pat Caddell at Breitbart.com. “Caddell was George McGovern’s pollster in 1972, and Jimmy Carter’s pollster in 1976 and 1980. The man knows the inner workings of the high command of the Democratic Party as an inside operator, so his insight is particularly valuable.”
Caddell warns Republican operatives and conservative activists to be wary of a late October surprise (even a November surprise) which could shift momentum toward President Obama if the public is not inoculated now. From Breitbart:
“October Surprises,” real and imagined, have been recurrent in US political history. The term can be thought of two ways: First, it is the simple reality that the unexpected “black swan” can emerge at any time, including on the eve of an election. Second, there’s the more nefarious idea that an incumbent could use the power of his office to affect the election. And such possible abuse by an incumbent has provoked challengers in elections to use the October Surprise phrase preemptively, as a way of warning voters to discount some last-minute bombshell.
Caddell anticipates a move by the Obama administration which could serve such a “nefarious” purpose:
[A] possible US military action against terrorists in Libya. We might first note that the entire Obama narrative on Libya has collapsed, leaving any Obama politico–including the totally political national security adviser, Tom Donilon–understandably desperate to do something to change the Libya story.
The national security expert advising Tea Party Patriots further fleshes out the potential scenario for PJ Tatler in this email:
As Commander in Chief, [President Obama] has power and authority over U.S. military assets.
His Administration has taken the art of drone strikes to a new level. See this Washington Post piece on counterterrorism adviser John Brennan’s June 2012 speech acknowledging publicly for the first time the Obama Administration’s new policy on the use of drones.
It would not stretch my imagination at all to conceive of a scenario in which the President, determined to show that he is a strong and determined leader (and in the process destroy the image of him as weak and feckless, an image clearly displayed by his administration’s response to Benghazi), would order drone strikes against militant targets in Libya — WHETHER OR NOT they were targeted against the terrorists who were responsible for the deaths of four Americans — so that he could then announce from the Briefing Room podium something along the lines of the following:
“Since the tragic events in Benghazi that took the lives of four Americans on September 11, 2012 — including my Ambassador and personal representative, Chris Stevens — my Administration has worked to identify and bring to justice those who were responsible. Today I am announcing publicly that last night, in (fill in the blank) Libya, (fill in the blank name) and (fill in the blank name) — identified by our intelligence sources as leaders of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi — were killed as the result of military action I ordered.
“Let the word go forth to all those who would seek to do harm to the United States, its people, or its vital interests — we will hunt you down and bring you to justice.”
And then he’d walk away from the podium, and leave his national security and communications aides to spin a pliant media with the notion that a month’s worth of “confusion” and “contradiction” on what happened in Benghazi — was it the result of a YouTube video? A planned terrorist assault? etc. — was actually part of a brilliantly crafted, deliberate plan undertaken by the administration in concert with U.S. intelligence agencies, who knew within hours who was responsible for the attack, but needed to “throw them off the scent” — that is, we didn’t want the terrorists to know just how much we knew about who was responsible for the attack, so the Obama White House made the politically dangerous decision to show itself as weak and rudderless and confused DELIBERATELY to confuse the terrorists. Thus, in this spin, Obama selflessly DID THE RIGHT THING, EVEN AT GREAT POLITICAL COST TO HIMSELF AND HIS REELECTION.
I shudder to think just how deeply the MSM will plant its collective nose up his collective rear end if/when this scenario occurs. Krugman, Matthews, Maddow, Schultz … they’ll think he’s martyred himself for the good of the nation, and we’ll never hear the end of it.
In his piece at Breitbart.com, Caddell provides much historical precedent for such a scenario. Taking the time now to consider the possibility undercuts its potential effectiveness. Caddell explains:
If Mitt Romney, the Republicans, and their allies want to win this election, they will have to put the issue of an October Surprise into a persuasive narrative, as a way of inoculating themselves against whatever the Obamans might be able to do. After all [there is much to] suggest that the Obama administration is quite capable–a better word than “capable” might be “eager”–to use national security variables for their partisan purposes.
Caddell’s full article is well worth a read, and it’s prescription of context-building should be followed.
Unless they’re operating on an “any target available” basis, good luck finding the right perps. A week isn’t long enough, after all this time.
But they may blow up some sand dunes and claim victory, that wouldn’t surprise me.
There are plenty of targets that may be “mildly bad” and, with the utter confusion that is ungoverned Libya, could be explained as “the right perps”. Done on the 4th or the 5th, there wouldn’t be any time to discover that it was merely “any available target”. Assuming it results in re-election, the mistake will be brushed aside as, don’t tell me if you’d heard this one before, “based on the best evidence we had”.
Well, it’s thinkable, at least. But to make it convincing, Obama and his minions would need to:
1. Construct a credible narrative for the operation, including sufficient details of the investigation on the ground;
2. Convince the electorate that the operation had “hit the right people” beyond a reasonable doubt;
3. Persuade the electorate that having “hit the right people” should overcompensate for not sending help in the first place.
The first task? A good storyteller could pull it off. But I don’t know if those last two tasks are possible now — and neither one can be skipped if the undertaking is to return Obama to the White House.
That’s correct… but The media blitz would would fill the airwaves until after the ballots are counted. It wouldn’t surprise me if the O Team shot first and explained later.
The story could fall apart on November 7th, as long as it got the job done, and then what? Impeachment? Not likely.
Republicans need to quit dancing around with the who did what, when routine. To help those under attack in Benghazi, it required putting ordinance and possibly troops on the ground in a foreign country. Only the President as CinC and executor of U.S. foreign policy could order such actions. So far, there has been no evidence he issued the direct orders required. Saying his first priority was to “secure Americans” could mean anything from recover their bodies to carpet bomb Benghazi. If he issued such a vague open-ended order, it was a gross error of command. After his failure to go to the rescue of Americans, without any plausible excuse, going after vengeance is weak sauce and does not negate the critical failure.
Barack Obama: A failure to command
Barack Obama has been president for over 3 years. The President is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. The President conducts U.S. foreign policy with the advice and consent of the Senate.
On Saturday the White House issued this statement:
“‘Neither the president nor anyone in the White House denied any requests for assistance in Benghazi,’ National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told Yahoo News by email.”
There have been no reports of the President ordering U.S. forces to assist those in in danger during the Benghazi attack which resulted in the murder of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador. As Commander in Chief and in executing his duties to conduct foreign policy, only the President could order the military to go to the aid of Americans under attack in a foreign country. The President’s refusal to issue orders directing U.S. military forces to go to the aid of the ambassador and others under attack is a denial of requests for help.
Command is sometimes a heavy burden. You do not advise and consent. You must make the decisions. Not making a decision is always the worst decision you can make. There is no voting “present”. For some reason, on September 11, 2012, while Americans were under sustained attack in a foreign country, with little hope of assistance from the host country, President Barack Obama chose to vote “Present!” then go to bed. His decision not to decide, his attempts at blaming subordinate commanders, and his refusal to answer for those decisions demonstrates Barack Obama is unfit for command.
What we know now is no one ordered U.S. forces to go to the assistance of those under attack in Benghazi. Everyone is denying they denied calls for help. But such a denial from the Commander in Chief is pathetic. Obama had only two choices that day, either issue orders sending help or not. Not denying pleas for help passes the buck to someone else, but when you are the Commander in Chief, there is no one else. Who could order American troops and aircraft to intervene in the face of White House silence on the requests? If not the President of the United States, Barack Obama, then who?
As the President of the United States must have moral authority to command as well as the Constitutional authority and Barack Obama has abdicated his responsibility to command while Americans were in harms way, we, the American People, have to relieve Barack Obama of his command and let him go.
They could time an assault with the National Geographic documentary “Seal Team Six” showing on November 4th for extra effect. I refuse to watch.
I assumed from moment one of Benghazi that they would wag the dog, but I’m less sure now than I was then.
First, Romney would have to amass a ten point lead for the Fraud to put boots on the ground, neither of which will happen.
So any kind of a reprisal attack will have to happen from sea or the air. Now, the Fraud wasn’t willing to put an aircraft at risk to save the life of an ambassador. I’m sure it wouldn’t bother him an iota to put an entire wing at risk to save his power….but it’s risky, isn’t it? He won’t take a risk unless forced by other people, so I can’t really see an attack by human beings.
That leaves drones, cruise missles and naval bombardment. One problem with all of those is that they simply don’t have the impact of a “gutsy call”. People know instinctively that there is little courage associated with punishments that don’t put American lives at risk. And then there is the problem of collateral damage. It doesn’t even need to be actual collateral damage, because in the first days after any attack there will inevitably be claims that can’t be verified. And those claims would filter through pravda’s brick firewall, also inevitably.
So the man who dithers over the temperature of his porridge is going to have a difficult time lobbing a few grenades, even if he thinks it could have a beneficial impact on his prospects.
Jarrett would have to make the decision and she is dead set agains killing muslims for any reason whatsoever.
IMHO – it seems like a move on this scale would require a great deal of complicity from State, DoJ, the Pentagon who’ve already been thrown under the bus by Obama.
It was George Orwell (who knew a thing or two about totalitarianism) who said that he did not write to predict the future. He wrote to prevent it. I hope this report does the same.
While I appreciate Mr. Caddell’s warning, the October Surprise is much more likely to be swing state voter fraud this week under cover of Hurricane Sandy.
Over at the Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes notes that the new Battleground Poll is now openly predicting a five point Romney win next week. That would translate into about 325-350 electoral votes.
The message we need to be getting out is that Romney is a strong if not prohibitive favorite, and that an Obamee win for any reason now is extremely suspect outside of massive voter fraud.
Yeah, Barack Obama will kill Muslims who attack embassies to save his job, but not your life.
This is *really* conspiracy theory-ish, but my fear is that Obama knew he was in trouble with the election. When the requests for more security came in, he deliberately held off, hoping there would be some sort of break-in or protest or something. When it came, he held off sending in the troops … so that he would have something to take vengeance over and boost his sagging popularity.
But then it blew up in his face. He didn’t expect a full-on, well-organized, and well-equipped assault, and he certainly didn’t expect anyone to be killed. So he fumbled on how to handle what happened, but will still try to make it into a last minute boost to his re-election.
Barck Obama is a radical and we must be prepared for anything from his scorn. he is capable of anything. I would look for those things that would inflict damage to the country, as a continuation of his extremely damaging Presidency. On the other hand, since golf is a passion and his retirement is upscale, he may take the money and run.
It would do no good. Ty Woods is still dead as is our ambassador and others. There’s nothing he can do now that isn’t too little too late.