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Why Hasn’t James Clapper Been Fired?
You might think that a cabinet-level intelligence officer who learns about terror plots from the news, lies to Congress about domestic spying, mistakenly characterizes an Islamist political movement taking power in a nation that’s a strategic ally as “largely secular,” and then fails to warn the President of the United States about the rise of a terror group unlike any seen since al-Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center, might lose his job. In the Obama administration, you would be wrong.
On Sunday’s 60 Minutes, President Obama blamed “the intelligence community” for failing to assess the threat from ISIS, a/k/a “the JV team.” Passing the buck to the Director of National Intelligence, the president said: “I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria” (my emphasis).
Now, you will recall, James Clapper, the overlord of our great virtual panopticon, is the fellow who learned about the London subway bombing arrests from Diane Sawyer, who misled Congress about the scope of the NSA’s electronic surveillance programs, and who infamously declared the Muslim Brotherhood (since overthrown by the Egyptian Army) to be “largely secular.”
But Clapper did not admit that our intelligence services had failed to assess and warn the president of the mounting threat posed by ISIS. Instead he allowed that his advisers had failed to accurately measure “the will” of ISIS terrorists and Iraqi soldiers. This is not news. It is not even an interesting admission. Intelligence services measure capabilities and actions, and warn on that basis. “Will” is guesswork, and every intelligence customer — like the president — knows it.
Many people took Obama as having thrown Clapper under the bus. But Clapper did not get run over. He dove under the bus. Like so many other senior non-entitites in the Administration, Clapper is a walking, talking demonstration of what appears to be Barack Obama’s core staffing philosophy: the Peter Principle.
And this is why he hasn’t been fired. Clapper has proved his worth to his boss, and did exactly what Obama wanted him to do: play the fall guy.
Image: “James R. Clapper official portrait” by Office of the Director of National Intelligence – http://www.dni.gov/images/DNI_James_Clapper.jpg. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The updated version of “Fell on his sword”: “Dove under the bus…”
So I would alter the title: from “Why Hasn’t James Clapper Been Fired” to “Why James Clapper Hasn’t Been Fired”
There are many people to blame for all of Obama’s foreign policies blunders but most of all, he needs to take responsibility for all of it. He’s passed the buck far too many times indicating that “he wasn’t aware or that he hadn’t been told.” I imagine that he’s been told plenty of times about plenty of problems unless Valerie is running interference for him. Either way, it’s not only an embarrassment, it’s dangerous for all of us.
It’s amazing how Obama continues to blame subordinates or the defenseless “intelligence community” (barred by law from exposing his falsehoods) for his policy failures, and no one in the media says to him, “Hey, wait a minute, aren’t you the Commander in Chief, as you keep reminding us?”
Eeyore – it starts out one way, and ends the other. And in both cases, the media doesn’t seem to be interested. This from the same crowd that endlessly hyped one general sentence in a Presidential Daily Briefing to argue that George Bush was explicitly warned about 9/11 and didn’t heed the call.
The other explanation is that no one gets fired by Obama. He stood behind Sebelius for a long time, well after she took the blame for not informing him of problems with healthcare.gov. He says he learned of major problems within his administration (e.g. political targeting by IRS employees) by reading the newspaper; yet the people who should have kept him informed were never fired. The Secret Service is plagued by problems, but no one resigns. Obama simply isn’t the kind of take-charge manager who sees problems through to resolution and holds people accountable for screwups.
Because Mitt Romney said he enjoyed firing people?
Oh come on. The “intelligence community” are consummate leakers, laws be damned. They are also Federal employees, which is also synonymous with incompetent, at this point.
I remember growing up and reading that “military intelligence” was an oxymoron. I think that came down from WWII? Nothing’s gotten better.
The senior people no doubt leak with the best of them. It’s the career professional analysts, who I have no doubt wrote months of warning reports, who don’t dare to contradict the bosses’ story.
Edit: And don’t forget this administration’s vigorous criminal legal pursuit of those whistleblowers/leakers who dare to contradict the dominant narrative.
Ahem.
Note that these are not mutually exclusive possibilities. I think it is most likely that Clapper did warn the president, the president didn’t read the intelligence reports, and now Obama’s [expletive]ing
His ego and self-image are way too delicate for him to admit that he is out of his depth in the Oval Office.
Re : comment # 7
Yes, or the bad luck that befalls potentially problematic people–people who might contradict the dominant narrative. I’m thinking of David Petraeus.
Exactly right. Firing someone is an admission that he, BHO, made a mistake in hiring him in the first place.
That’s why he kept Joe Biden as running mate even though every responsibility Biden was handed has turned to dreck, from managing the stimulus to negotiating the Iraq withdrawal, if memory serves.
That’s why he didn’t fire Hillary after Benghazi, or Sebelius, or Clapper, but he did fire:
So, endanger national security you get a pass. Criticize Obama you get the axe.
There is actually a bit of that going on, but mostly on the margins.
Fair point.
I’ve been a critic of the Intelligence communities, however, since the CIA used to regurgitate the Soviet Union’s statistics manuals as “Intelligence”. I don’t think they’ve gotten any better in the interim.
I don’t think he’s out of his depth, at all. I think he’s been amazingly successful. Seriously.
He just doesn’t happen to share my goals…
As the Pope said yesterday about another bad guy, “He presents things as if they were good. But his intention is destruction.”
Here, Obama’s ego is tied up primarily in his “I ended the war in Iraq” mantra. Anything that threatens that image is in danger. Thus he’s happy to ignore the growth of ISIS until it can’t be ignored any more, and then respond to it by pretending that air strikes are humanitarian relief of an oppressed minority, not combat operations against a developing Islamist terror threat.
He doesn’t seem to have any problem discrediting and then firing people (Petraeus, McChrystal) whose positions and credibility on prominent issues threaten this narrative.
We’re always presupposing that excellence and achievement are the President’s governing motivations. I’ve come to the conclusion we’re wrong. When your ideology requires that you diminish this once-great nation — that you don’t even believe in its founding principles and exceptionalism — then failures of its institutions are a feature of your “leadership,” not a bug. And, besides, it’s all so effortless.
It explains why he spends so much time on the golf course, too. He needn’t worry much about his security in the White House as long as he’s not there.
The entertaining Neil Munro at the Daily Caller reports that Obama has spent more time playing golf than attending intelligence briefings. And the band marches on . . .
That’s a good one, James is going to get a Medal Of Freedom, a lucrative consulting position with a public relations firm for the Muslim Bros, and a heros’ welcome for the rest of his life.
Having weak people around him makes him look better. He doesn’t have to worry about being upstaged by the likes of Biden, Kerry, or Clapper.
Obama can be foolish (lacking in wisdom), not be half as smart as he thinks he is, be lazy, and at the same time have nefarious purposes. There is plenty of evidence for all of these failings.
Lacking in wisdom: His approach to the mullahs in Iran, to Putin, his failure to work with Congress, his inattention to the debt, his penchant for looking at the world through a racial lens, his poor relationships with other world leaders.
Not so smart: Cash for Clunkers, the stimulus, the Affordable Care Act, corpseman, his inability to make a correct statement about any Supreme Court case.
Lazy: the incessant golf, the failure to attend daily security briefings, pawning off distasteful tasks to Joe Biden.
Nefarious purposes: The border crisis and how he handles it, the debt, arrogation of lawmaking and law-changing power to the executive, the racialization of politics, the diminishment of the military including numbers of troops, ships, and the purging of the officer corps.
Update: General Clapper has now reportedly distributed a memo useful to wipe the tire marks off the “intelligence community:”
It would have been priceless if Clapper had only added “over the last few days” at the end of that sentence. The report continues:
NB for General Clapper and the President: There actually is an intelligence tool that helps predict how human organizations will perform: it’s called “human intelligence” — spies, diplomats, soldiers — people with eyes on the situation, who talk to other people. Do you know why it was so difficult to predict the “will” of our Iraqi allies to fight? I think you do. Because you withdrew all of the US forces who were working with them and would have been on site to support, assess and report on their morale and readiness. Good job.