Obama's 'Seven Days in May' Moment

By Robert Parry
February 20, 2009

Only one month into his presidency, Barack Obama is finding himself confronting not only George W. Bush’s left-behind crises but an array of influential enemies in the military, financial circles, the political world and the media – determined to thwart Obama’s agenda for “change.”

Though Obama has maintained his trademark equanimity in the face of this resistance, he appears to be sensing the rising tide of dangers around him. After his failed gestures of bipartisanship on the economic stimulus bill, he pointedly took his case to the country in campaign-style town meetings.

“You know, I am an eternal optimist,” Obama told a group of columnists about his rebuffed outreach to Republicans. “That doesn’t mean I’m a sap.”

Yet even if he’s no “sap,” Obama must find within himself the toughness of extraordinary leadership and the resourcefulness to defeat or neutralize powerful enemies if he is to succeed. His initial hopes of a “post-partisan” era already have been shown to be naïve, even dangerously so.

(Not so sure that Obama is all that naive. He is beginning his administration by fulfilling promises he made during the campaign. If others do no wish to join him (and us) in the unity it will take to see us through the nightmare, surely to get worse, that the Bush administration intentionally left us, ordinary Americans will see it for what it is...sabotage.

Obama faces near-unanimous Republican opposition to his strategy for salvaging the U.S. economy (and a GOP readiness to use the Senate filibuster at every turn); right-wing talk radio and cable-TV personalities are stoking a populist anger against him; Wall Street executives are miffed at limits on their compensation; and key military commanders are resisting his promised draw-down in Iraq.

In addition, former Bush administration officials are making clear that they will fight any effort to hold them accountable for torture and other war crimes, denouncing it as a “witch-hunt” that will be met with an aggressive counterattack accusing Obama of endangering American security.

It is not entirely inconceivable that Obama’s powerful enemies could coalesce into a kind of “Seven Days in May” moment, the novel and movie about an incipient coup aimed at a President who was perceived as going too far against the country’s political-military power structure.

Far more likely, however, Obama’s fate could parallel Jimmy Carter’s, a President whose reelection bid in 1980 was opposed by a phalanx of powerful enemies at home and abroad, including disgruntled CIA officers, angry Cold Warriors, and young neoconservatives allied with Israel’s right-wing Likud leaders furious over Carter’s Middle East peace initiatives.

Carter little understood the breadth, depth and clout of the opposition he faced – and the full story of how his presidency was sabotaged has never been told. [For the most detailed account, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

(There is, however, a huge difference in Carter's days in office and today. That difference is the information we have access to today that no one even dreamed of back then. Certainly, wherever there is information there is disinformation. Americans, as well as other citizens of planet earth, must learn to recognize the difference between b.s and transparency.)

Hobbling Obama

The current Republican strategy appears to be to hobble the Obama administration out of the gate, have it stumble forward through a deteriorating economy and collapse before the 2010 and 2012 elections, enabling the GOP to retake control of the government.

However, Obama is not without resources of his own. A brilliant orator and clever politician, he won a decisive electoral victory in November and drew 1.8 million to his Inauguration on a frigid day in Washington on Jan. 20. The Democrats also have sizable majorities in the House and Senate.

There also are some media voices – like Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow – and much of the “Net roots” urging Obama to resist the pressures and stick to his guns.

But most of the U.S. news media continues to tilt to the Right – from the Washington Post’s neoconservative editorialists and CNBC’s millionaire commentators to the right-wing ideologues of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the Wall Street Journal.

How this right-wing media infrastructure (we would call it fascist) can stoke a sudden brushfire was displayed Thursday when CNBC reporter Rick Santelli – on the trading floor of the Chicago commodities exchange – fumed about Obama’s plan to help up to nine million Americans avoid foreclosure.

Santelli suggested that Obama set up a Web site to get public feedback on whether “we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages.” Then, gesturing to the wealthy traders in the pit, Santelli declared, “this is America” and asked “how many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills, raise their hand.”

Amid a cacophony of boos aimed at Obama’s housing plan, Santelli turned back to the camera and said, “President Obama, are you listening?”

(Whether Obama was listening or not, we were, Mr. Santelli, and we, independents, consider you to be a disgrace to your profession, whatever that is, as well as expendable....you know, like the soldiers who were sent into a senseless quagmire of a war for the protection of the energy corporations you worship.)

Though Santelli’s behavior in a different context – say, a denunciation of George W. Bush near the start of his presidency – would surely have resulted in a suspension or firing, Santelli’s anti-Obama rant was hailed as “the Chicago tea party,” made Santelli an instant hero across right-wing talk radio, and was featured proudly on NBC’s Nightly News.

One can only imagine the future reaction from CNBC’s commentators – and Santelli’s rich traders – if Obama decides to nationalize some of America’s giant insolvent banks or if his administration imposes stricter limits on Wall Street’s executive compensation.

(Who cares what his reaction will be? He isn't the Lord of the Rings or anything else for that matter. The only reason he received any attention at all is because he behaved like an on=air psychotic. People don't usually get to see that kind of behavior unless they work on a locked ward.)

Military Opposition

But Obama’s dilemma is not just that he is offending the plutocrats of the U.S. financial sector, or that he faces Republican resistance in Congress, or that he’s running headlong into the Right’s potent media machine.

Obama also will have to take on key leaders of the U.S. military. Part of this is his own fault for listening to centrist Democrats who urged him to retain President Bush’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates, one of Obama’s high-profile gestures of bipartisanship.

(I'm not so sure about Robert's analysis here:

I'm not so sure that Obama's decisions were born out of a futile wish for bipartinship. Take a careful look at the cabinet positions he offered Republicans. DOD and Transportation, for example.

Nevermind Judd Gregg. According to my sources, Mr. Gregg had a few more problems than just "philoshophical" disagreements with any Democrat; disagreements he must have had before he agreed to take the job and then bailed.

If there is a hit on U.S. soil, early on in the Obama administration, it's a good thing to have Republicans in those positions that will surely be blamed.

Look at who George W. Bush/Dick Cheney kept on from the, supposedly, much hated Clinton administration: Tenet at the CIA and Mineta at Transportation, the two agencies that took the biggest hit in terms of blame for 9/11. Of course, Junior remained "grandly loyal" to them both, keeping them on after the worst attack on American soil since the war of 1812. After that, they owed him big time. Just about everyone blamed the CIA and Transportation, after it became public knowledge that we had been warned, time and time again, that just such an attack was not only possible but imminent.

After that, the DOT was asked to beef up security (meaning harrass the American flying public so we would all feel safe, LOL. Tenet was asked to take the blame for the "bad Intel." that supposedly led us into a war of aggression and eventually had to fall on his sword to save Bush and Cheney from the gallows. For this he received the Medal of Freedom or some damn thing, which now means nothing to anyone but an award for silence.)

Though well-liked in Washington power circles – and possessing a disarming style – Gates has a history as a hawkish policymaker who will undercut a President he sees as going soft. As a young CIA officer, Gates was linked to the behind-the-scenes sabotage of Carter in 1980. [See Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege, or Consortiumnews.com’s “The Secret World of Robert Gates.”]

Gates had better be careful. This nation is in too dire a straights for him to be messing with a duly elected president and those who elected him.

When Bush nominated Gates to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in November 2006, Official Washington (and many Democrats) assumed that the move meant that Bush was adopting a more pragmatic approach to Iraq and would soon begin a phased withdrawal.

What Washington insiders misunderstood was that Rumsfeld had become a relative dove on Iraq and opposed a troop “surge.” Meanwhile, Gates – both as a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and in a meeting with Bush in Crawford, Texas – was supporting an escalation of troops in Iraq.

(Did official Washington really misunderstand, or were they simply happy that Poppy's man was in and a Nixon/Cheney man was out? For some reason, D.C. insiders still have respect for the old man)

As Bush told Bob Woodward in an interview for the book, The War Within, Gates “said he thought that [a troop increase] would be a good idea.” Bush added: “In November [2006], I’m beginning to think about not fewer troops, but more troops. And, interestingly enough, the man I’m talking to in Crawford feels the same way.”

To open the door for the “surge” of about 30,000 additional U.S. troops, Bush also ousted his two field commanders, Gens. John Abizaid and George Casey, replacing them with pro-surge generals, David Petraeus and Ray Odierno, who remain the top two commanders today.

Although Obama ran for President on a platform calling for withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq within 16 months, his decision to retain Gates – announced in late November 2008 – apparently sent a message to Petraeus and Odierno that the incoming President could be persuaded to slow the withdrawal pace and possibly agree to a permanent U.S. military presence.

Instead of taking Obama’s 16-month timetable seriously, Petraeus and Odierno began outlining a scheme for a modest withdrawal of about 7,000 to 8,000 troops in the first six months of 2009 – bringing the total down to levels that still might be higher than those before the surge two years ago – and then keeping the numbers there until at least June 2009 when additional judgments would be made, according to a New York Times report in mid-December 2008.

There was an article in the Houston chronicle a couple of years ago all about Bush friends visiting the W.H. and coming home with real concerns about Junior's mental health. They said that Junior had advised them that nobody should be concerned about any president who followed him having free reign in Iraq...that he was busy setting a trap for the next occupant of the W.H. that would make it impossible for him/her to exit Iraq any time soon, if ever. As Babs Bush once said, her son is crazy like a fox. Meanwhile, the U.S. is rapidly swirling down the toilet as a result of the trap Junior mentioned regarding Iraq and, I would bet, traps haiving to do with the economy, Afghanistan and more.

The Bush/Cheney administration, along with their enablers in Congress, on Wall Street, right-wing media and in Neoconservative "think"tanks, are surely trying their dead-level best to re-write the criminal history of the last administration. We must not let them!

‘Stay the Course’

Rather than “change you can believe in,” the generals seemed to have in mind something closer to Bush’s “stay the course.” They also appeared to have little respect for the “status of forces agreement” signed with the Iraqi government, calling for U.S. military withdrawal from the cities by June 30, 2009, and a complete American pullout by the end of 2011.

Odierno, top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said American combat troops will remain in Iraqi cities after June 30, 2009, though called “transition teams” advising Iraqi forces. Col. James Hutton, a spokesman for Odierno, later amplified on the general’s comments, characterizing U.S. troops staying behind in the cities as “enablers to Iraqi security forces.”

Iraqi critics of the status-of-forces agreement took note of these American word games of redefining U.S. troops as “transition teams” and “enablers.”

“This confirmed our view that U.S. forces will never withdraw from the cities next summer, and they will never leave Iraq by the end of 2011,” said Ahmed al-Masoudi, a spokesman for a Shiite parliamentary bloc close to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

As for the final pullout deadline of Dec. 31, 2011, Odierno observed that it, too, could be waived. “Three years is a very long time,” he told reporters.

Washington Post military writer Thomas E. Ricks picked up a similar message from Odierno and other military leaders during interviews for Ricks’s new book, The Gamble.

In an Outlook piece for the Post, Ricks wrote: “The widespread expectation inside the U.S. military is that we will have tens of thousands of troops [in Iraq] for years to come. Indeed, in his last interview with me last November, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told me that he would like to see about 30,000 troops still there in 2014 or 2015.”

Reflecting this consensus within the U.S. military, Ricks wrote, “I worry now that we are once again failing to imagine what we have gotten ourselves into and how much more we will have to pay in blood, treasure, prestige and credibility. I don't think the Iraq war is over, and I worry that there is more to come than any of us suspect.”

Ricks quoted Col. Peter Mansoor, a top aide to Gen. Petraeus, as saying: “This is not a campaign that can be won in one or two years. … The United States has got to be willing to underwrite this effort for many, many years to come. I can't put it in any brighter colors than that."

Resistance to Obama

In other words, some top U.S. field commanders took the measure of the incoming Commander in Chief and concluded that they could roll him. When Petraeus and Gates met with Obama on Jan. 21, they reportedly were surprised when he insisted that they submit a plan that would phase out U.S. combat forces in 16 months.

Citing two sources familiar with the meeting, investigative reporter Gareth Porter wrote that the Pentagon brass was upset with Obama's refusal to back down, but they still saw the meeting as essentially an opening skirmish in the battle to reverse the 16-month withdrawal pledge.

“The decision to override Petraeus's recommendation [for a longer stay in Iraq] has not ended the conflict between the President and senior military officers over troop withdrawal,” Porter wrote. “There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.

“A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilizing public opinion against Obama's decision.”

According to Porter, that group includes retired Gen. Jack Keane, who was a leading proponent of the Iraq troop “surge” and a longtime friend of Petraeus.

Obama also can expect fierce resistance from the Right if he pushes ahead with plans to rein in Pentagon spending. Already, Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan, a prominent neocon, has written a column entitled, “No Time to Cut Defense.”

Yep, God only knows how many financial portfolios, hidden from public view in private investment groups, will sink if Obama cuts spending for the "the Beast." Just look at how long the "peace dividend" lasted after the Berlin Wall came tumbling down during GHWB's one term. It seemed like a mere blink of the eye before we were blasting Baghdad and surrounding parts of Iraq, a military intervention which eventually brought us to the current nightmare; a military intervention that was also based on quite a few lies and double dealing.

And the defenders of the Bush administration are gearing up for a full-scale political war if Obama’s Justice Department moves forward on criminal investigations relating to Bush’s authorization of torture and other crimes committed under the umbrella of the “war on terror.”

(We can only hope that the war they plan on waging is "political." from what we hear and read, the war may come to much more than that.)

So, just one month into his presidency, Obama finds himself surrounded by a growing A-list of powerful enemies.

This may not become his “Seven Days in May” moment, but he can be sure that his adversaries want him – like Jimmy Carter – to be a one-term President.

....and we, U.S. unaligned independents, may be the least powerful people in the industrialized world, until election day in the U.S., as a general rule. We are generally moderate, leaning slightly left or right depending on what's happening in the nation. We are free thinkers, tied to no ideology but believers in democratic principles of governance, like majority rule with protection for the minority, but tyranny by neither. Rather, we believe, it is better when politicians put the nation's interests above the interest of their own party or their own political careers and, therefore, seek consensus where and when it can be found.

That being said, we will not tolerate attempts to sabotage of the president we elected, nor his administration, as long as he is doing his best to make the changes we elected him to make and given the horrible mess he inherited.

Independent, unaligned voters, unlike many liberals, believe there is a ver good reason for the second amendment, especially when the first amendment is threatened, and don't have a problem with responsible gun-ownership or ownership of other means of self-protection. Unlike the type of conservatives we see today, we are horrified by the hate speech coming from the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, O'Reilly and others who make up the Right-wing media and the very obvious obstructionism by right-wing politicians, both in and out of D.C..

We are sick and tired of it! We support our president and we will do whatever it takes to help him and protect him from those who wish to cancel out our votes and continue with the criminal policies of George W. Bush and his administration.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

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Let The Sun Shine In......