I’m still trying to figure out why Obama — or any high-level U. S. government official other than Eric Holder, who was in Paris but evidently had better things to do — didn’t join the nearly 4 million people who marched throughout France protesting the terror killings at #CharlieHebdo and the Hyper Cacher market. White House press secretary Josh Earnest has admitted [1] the mistake and apologized (perhaps a little wishy-washily, but we’ll give him a pass), informing us that, unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough time to arrange presidential security for the trip.
That’s interesting. Somehow there was time for security for 40 or so other world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel (arguably the most highly regarded politician on the planet at the moment and the de facto president of the EU), the UK’s David Cameron, Spain’s Mariano Rajoy and even Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu (probably a considerably bigger target than Obama these days and not exactly welcomed by France’s President Hollande, if reports are correc [2]t). Of course, the “American president” is supposedly more important but — correct me if I’m wrong — Obama was not originally so gung-ho on American exceptionalism [3], equating it with British exceptionalism and Greek exceptionalism, etc., etc. All countries, after all, feel they are exceptional.
Well, he’s changed his mind [4] on this several times, so who’s to say? And there was a game on. I’m a sports fan, too, tennis more than football (wimpy, huh?), so I understand. You’d have trouble prying me away from the Australian Open when it starts next week. (Djokovic and Nadal ain’t so wimpy.) But still, in the event of one of the biggest and ugliest terror events in recent years, if I were president, I hope I’d TiVo a couple of rounds.
Just yesterday I theorized [5] the real reason Obama didn’t go is he just couldn’t put the words “Islamic” and “terrorism” together in one sentence even if, forgive the tired image, it hit him in the face. (The exception of course being when insisting that something is NOT Islam.) He just can’t handle it after nearly fifty years of virtually non-stop anti-imperialist programming. His mind would fly apart if he had to utter the words “radical Islamic terrorism,” which French PM Valls, and any honest person, was quite willing to do.
Now I admit that was just a supposition. Just because I’ve never heard him link Islam and terror doesn’t mean in his heart of hearts he doesn’t. Though not a genius, he does have an IQ in triple digits and sees what’s right in front of his nose, I assume. He just interprets it differently. But why?
Is someone whispering in his ear?
Senator Dianne Feinstein has just informed us that, yes, there are Islamic terror sleeper cells in our midst [6] in the USA. If that’s true, I wonder why Feinstein wasted so much of her time wounding the CIA [7]during the last weeks of her tenure as Senate Intelligence Committee chair, but never mind. Could there be one of those cells in the White House?
I started this post thinking it was kind of funny. I liked the hed — “Is the White House a ‘Sleeper Cell’?” It reminded me of, um… Charlie Hebdo. But actually it’s not so funny. And it’s not impossible. We know something close already happened during the communist era (Alger Hiss), and the Israelis famously planted an agent, Eli Cohen [8], at the highest echelons of the Syrian government until he was caught via the KGB and hanged in the central square of Damascus. They say it was Cohen’s reports that were responsible for the rapid Israeli success against the Syrians in the Six-Day War.
But a “sleeper cell” in the White House? It would certainly explain Obama’s not going to France, which was a decision that hurt the USA, hurt the effort against Islamic terror and hurt the president’s already tarnished reputation into the bargain. There are so many other things that the existence of a White House “sleeper cell” would explain that I couldn’t even begin to count them. And as you know, a cell doesn’t have to be violent to be active. There are many ways to do damage.
But who would be a member of this cell? Is it one or all of them? Well that, I am sorry to say, I cannot tell you. I do not have the proper clearance. You are, however, free to guess. Who would stop you?
