Why, yes. Yes, I did:
Last Saturday afternoon, President Obama got a jarring update from his national security team: With restive crowds of young Egyptians demanding President Hosni Mubarak’s immediate resignation, Frank G. Wisner, Mr. Obama’s envoy to Cairo, had just told a Munich conference that Mr. Mubarak was indispensable to Egypt’s democratic transition.
Mr. Obama was furious, and it did not help that his secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Wisner’s key backer, was publicly warning that any credible transition would take time — even as Mr. Obama was demanding that change in Egypt begin right away.
Seething about coverage that made it look as if the administration were protecting a dictator and ignoring the pleas of the youths of Cairo, the president “made it clear that this was not the message we should be delivering,” said one official who was present. He told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to take a hard line with his Egyptian counterpart, and he pushed Senator John Kerry to counter the message from Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Wisner when he appeared on a Sunday talk show the next day.
Hillary Clinton was Frank Wisner Jr.’s main backer? I knew something stunk about sending Wisner because it didn’t seem like something Obama would do based on Wisner Sr.’s record. I thought it was unlikely, but possible, that Wisner Sr.’s role in installing the Shah in Iran had escaped Obama’s memory banks and I was quite shocked to see such a horrible message sent to Cairo and the Islamic world. It turns out that Clinton suggested him and that he didn’t go there to send the president’s message but a message of support from those who made a buck or two off our relationship with Mubarak. “Hang in there, buddy, you’re indispensable.”
So, the president flipped his lid and called up his buddy John Kerry to tell him to contradict that bullshit when he went on Meet the Press.
Meanwhile, he told Mubarak to get the fuck out, even as Clinton, Biden, and Gates tried to get him to side with the PermaGov.
The trouble in sending a clear message was another example of how divided Mr. Obama’s foreign policy team remains. A president who himself is often torn between idealism and pragmatism was navigating the counsel of a traditional foreign policy establishment led by Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Biden and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, against that of a next-generation White House staff who worried that the American preoccupation with stability could put a historic president on the wrong side of history.
In interviews, participants described those tensions, as well as offering the first descriptions of Mr. Obama’s two difficult phone calls imploring Mr. Mubarak to take the protesters’ demands seriously. In those conversations, as Mr. Obama pressed Mr. Mubarak without demanding that he resign, the embattled Egyptian leader pushed back hard, arguing that the protests were the work of the Muslim Brotherhood and agents of Iran, a contention the Americans dismissed.
The officials said the hardest of those conversations came on Tuesday, Feb. 1, barely an hour after Mr. Mubarak announced he would not run for president again. In Mr. Obama’s view, Mr. Mubarak still had not gone far enough. Describing the conversation, one senior official quoted Mr. Obama as telling the Egyptian president, “It is time to present to the people of Egypt its next government.” He added, “The future of your country is at stake.”
Mr. Mubarak replied, “Let’s talk in the next three or four days.” He added, “And when we talk, you will find that I was right.” The two men never talked again.
Biden occasionally breaks the mold, as he did in his opposition to the escalation in Afghanistan, but the president still stands largely alone in his foreign policy team in siding against our sixty-five year history of screwing the underdog in favor of “stability” and “access to markets.” The man has guts, but it’s really nothing but a progressive view of U.S. foreign policy in the post-war era. We all espouse that view, but we never see it carried out in Washington DC. When I see things that never happen, happen, then I have to make a note of it.
Even Jimmy Carter shrugged while the Shah butchered the protesters in 1978 and 1979.
You want to know why I was so passionate that Obama, and not Clinton, be the Democratic nominee? It wasn’t for health care reform. It was for decisions like this.
thanks for researching this stuff and breaking it down, plain and simple, BooMan.
I feel ya.
That was righteous. I’m proud of the president standing behind the people of Egypt. Pressuring Mubarak was good policy and good for US moral standing in the region. We can stand to improve on that.
Great!
also thrilled that you spotted how this guy didn’t fit in anywhere. I remember reading your previous point about this weasel, BooMan. you had his number, and you were on point with your criticisms. posts like that…that you can go from a- b- c- and see the dots…I enjoy coming here for that reason.
I’d also like to point out that Obama is passionate enough about this that he made sure to set the record straight by leaking this stuff to New York Times. The result in Egypt and the fallout is uncertain, but he wants total ownership of this decision. He made sure Clinton doesn’t have ownership, but that opens him for criticism later if things get ugly. He believes in his decision.
That’s the progressive mindset that I always had faith that he had, because of who he is, where he comes from, and his life experience.
I also called bullshit on Wisner’s comments as soon as I read them in a certain-social-network-that-shall-not-be-named, stating unequivocally that one loudmouth asshole shooting his mouth off
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the entirety of the administration’s position. I also had some choice words for the person who posted the info as proof Obama’s relationship with dictators superseded the will of the Egyptian people, then had to stay off the site until my temper cooled.I really need to work on that last part.
That should read “…does not equal the entirety…”
re: stay off the site until temper cooled – with you on that – same problem here during the past 2 weeks
What you say is so true. Actually I read that a couple of Hillary’s supporters were on CNN and they said Obama should step off of the stage. This is Hillary’s territory.
Is this common in dem politics? You would never see repugs do this after a nasty race to the top.
I am not trying to say that there are not hard feelings, but come on, it ended 2.5 years ago.
Boo:
Was it you who posted the other day about Obama’s speech in Cairo back in ’09? It appears that Hillary and crew didn’t fully realize the implications of that speech. It appears the President did. And I am glad he did.
Yes, I have referenced his speech at least twice. He told both Mubarak and his “subjects” that the people of Egypt were being mistreated, that the answer was non-violent resistance, and that he would side with the people if they demanded their rights. The people listened, Mubarak did not, and Obama kept his word.
Damn straight! I think when I look back on my life in 40 years, supporting Obama in the caucuses may be one of my prouder memories. 🙂
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Right!
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
So Clinton sold Obama on the idea that sending Wisner to feel Mubarak out about stepping down (or whatever Wisner’s instructions were) was a good idea? Or did she send him without consulting the President?
Who comes out looking very good in this is Margaret Scobey, the ambassador, considering that in the Wikileaks cable about the April 6 movement she dismissed the idea that they could succeed. Nonetheless, she was the official tasked with keeping tabs on the views of the various opposition figures.
Now, the consequences of the ouster of Mubarak have to follow the path of the collapse of Soviet-dominated regimes in Eastern Europe and not the path of Iran.
Not to hope too much, but the real accomplishment would be if the train of events topples Ahmedinejad. And the changed situation forces Israel to deal in good faith.
What’s clear is that however Wisner was plucked out of his comfortable retirement, he pissed off the president and will not be used again.
Maybe someone should investigate how Wisner’s getting paid. In fact, the whole lobbying industry representing foreign leaders (rarely their countries) needs to have the lid blown off of it. First up: Tony Podesta and company.
After reading the NYT, it appears that she sent Wisner on her own. That is why Obama was “seething” after Wisner made his comments. I am a supporter of the president, but I have to admit, it sure would be fun to see him seething.
Tarheel Dem:
Yep. This should be very interesting. Netenyahu back-assed his way into this corner by being the perfect arrogant creep in the ME. Now with a new Egypt perhaps seeking a democracy similar to Erdogan’s in Turkey, we may be seeing him a little more humbled. That would be very very good. Let’s hope he keeps his mitts off the place until the Egyptian people get to ground on making their new government and country.
What an astonishing world we are waking to.
Ah. So Hilary is trying to conduct her own shadow-foreign policy.
And it seemed she had been doing so well, taking her orders from President Obama.
Too bad she had to try to stab him in the back – now she looks like a worthless sack of shit.
Looks can be deceiving. But not in this case.
I’m not sure that this is what happened. Clinton might have been caught as flat-footed by Wisner’s cynical behavior as everyone else. There were multiple tracks of interaction going on. I would not be surprised if in the end Wisner’s open plumping for Mubarak did not turn out to be a good thing in that it pushed the administration to get off the dime. It also happened at a critical time in the chain of events going on in Egypt.
The US gave Mubarak an incredible amount of discretion; Mubarak could have chosen to be a Gorabchev figure. Instead he bet on becoming a Lukachenko and wound up a Ceoacescu (at least he avoided Ceaucescu’s ultimate fate).
I think it’s a mistake to think that personal politics permeates all relationships in government. My sense is that Hillary is not going to run again and that she sees the opportunity to make her mark as one of the most successful Secretaries of State since George C. Marshall. Watch. The arc of history.
Not sure the “incompetent” path really helps her much.
It’s always tough when you end up caught choosing between the Scylla of “evil” and the Charybdis of “incompetent”.
And loveloveLOVE how you try to paint the Wisner craptacularity as a GOOD thing.
lols – Just a wild guess: you were/are a Clinton supporter?
sherifffruitfly, based on the Times article, I’m going to side with TarheelDem on this one.
It’s not clear from the article that Clinton was “siding with” Wisner. In fact, it seems pretty clear that Wisner’s statement was an outlier (by a wide margin) when compared to all other Obama administration statements over the last three weeks.
In a revolutionary situation, everyone has imperfect knowledge of the other actors and events, and everyone struggles to keep up with the constantly shifting scene. Overall, the Obama administration (including the hawkish wing) seems to have done a pretty good job, while as Booman says, the president (once again) seems to have done an excellent job of laying out his broad vision, goals and timeline, and of getting his “team of rivals” to work together to accomplish those goals.
very very interesting. re: what you say about Wisner’s open plumping – also set USA clearly at a distance from protesters
This really validates the “Team of Rivals” approach that so many people criticize him for. I shudder imagine the damage H Clinton, Biden, & co. would be doing to Obama and throught it the world if they remained outside the administration criticizing him for the benefit of their own careers.
In addition to the team of rivals appointments (Lincoln), Obama in this case tasked multiple people to deal with this crisis – Clinton, Gates, Wisner, Scobey, and probably more. This is an approach that FDR used successfully many times during his presidency.
Hey, I was a Hill backer in the primaries, and proud of it. We’ll see about this piece and whether it holds up, and the Times is hardly a friend of the Clintons, as with their years-long Whitewater pseudo-scandal mongering.
That said, I backed her despite her more conservative, traditional FP inclinations and Iraq vote. Of course, we got Obama instead, and a doubling down, and more, of the US military involvement in Afghanistan, Gates for SecDef, and generally too much BushLite in other areas like Gitmo, rendition and related. No worse than a wash between the two when looked at in the overall FP area.
As for Wisner, again ultimately that’s Obama’s responsibility on these hugely important and delicate envoy situations. If he wanted to send a clearer, sharper message to Mubarak about Change Now or Prepare to Leave Now, he should have known better than to sign off on Wisner. More narrowly-focused advisers like Clinton tend to advise in a certain way, but smart presidents working from a wider range of input should ultimately use independent judgment and decide based on a careful match of mission and man, even if that would mean stepping on Clinton’s toes.
this is a really boring apologia.
I don’t post here to entertain or amuse. I think the president is ultimately the responsible party in these extraordinary diplomatic situations.
sure. And he’s pissed off at what happened.
Irony: Clinton people babbling about Obama being too conservative.
Well… if you’re of the mindset that Hilary has no responsibility, then I guess there’s no point in Obama keeping her employed.
lol @ Hilary people.
Her responsibility in those circumstances was to advise. The president decides.
If he thinks the Wisner situation rises to the grave level that some of you here suggest, then Obama should ask for her resignation.
Maybe Gates, too, for generally lousy advice.
And how about Biden? That “Mubarak is not a dictator” public utterance didn’t seem too helpful …
(shrug) That’s for Obama to decide.
But seeing Hilary’s craptacular performance here – working directly against pro-Democracy forces, going directly against Obama’s direction, DAAAAAAAAAAAMN am I glad Obama is the one taking the 3am call, and not Hilary.
There was no indication that Wisner would not keep his opinions to himself in the midst of this crisis. And the administration recovered quickly. I don’t buy the Obama-Clinton rivalry narrative that the NYT and others are pushing. It was Wisner’s failure of integrity as a public servant; the responsibility stops with Wisner. Who now will never be asked to help his country again.
Re: the Obama-Clinton rivalry narrative. The far more plausible narrative (in my view) is Clinton was a good team player and played her role well these last three weeks. If the boss (Obama) comes out of a situation like this looking good, then it means the players on the team have done their jobs well.
(Well, okay, Frank Wisner got pulled out of the game after committing a foul, two turnovers and missing an open jumper in two minutes of playing time, but you can survive that from a scrub pulled off the bench. That’s a different matter entirely.)
Wisner may just have been chosen because he would supposedly have been listened to by Mubarak, his crappy opinions may well have simply been his own.
Hillary is OK, but she could never possibly have the (minimal, but present) clout on the Arab street that Obama has via identity, then word, and now action.
Among anyone who ran for President last, the President is uniquely capable to shepherd democratic change in the Arab world, not just to foment it or suppress it, but actually help things work out well. Not saying he’s some master of the world, but folks will trust him just that much more, at least for now.
Hopefully that buys enough time for us to reach a new stability in the region, and Egypt especially.
Now if he’d just decide to enforce all the laws for all the people in THIS country, we’d really have something.
We’d have impeachment, at best. I wonder when being “progressive” started to imply a commitment to pretending that all powerful interests could be dismissed by executive fiat.
Insightful.
“You want to know why I was so passionate that Obama, and not Clinton, be the Democratic nominee? It wasn’t for health care reform. It was for decisions like this.”
Damn straight,Boo.
“…the U.K Independent’s Robert Fisk has discovered a major conflict of interest that may explain why Wisner was so comfortable with suggesting that Mubarak … should stay in power during a transition period.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/07/us-envoy-frank-wisner/
That conflict of interest might have been the precise reason that Wisner was selected to talk directly with Mubarak. The failure was not in sending Wisner to get a read on Mubarak; it was Wisner’s going public with Wisner’s own opinion of what should happen.
Different opinions were likely also coming from Margaret Scobey, who did not express opinions in public. No doubt her reading was trusted by Obama more than Wisner’s. After all, she is career foreign service and is the appointed ambassador.
I’ve always liked Sammantha Powers and not that she needed to be vindicated after the Hillary bruhaha during the campaign but he was wise to bring her back when things calmed down and no doubt she helped shoulder some of the trenchwork here to allow Obama to stay true to his message.
I’m glad the NYT got the leak, it explains alot.
I recommend two books :
America’s Nazi Secret by John Loftus
A Mosque in Munich (…) by Ian Johnson
Both authors have their own internet sites.
Lot of information about Frank Wisner Sr in the first one.
In the second one there is some information about Frank Wisner Sr but mostly about the introduction of Islamism in the Occident.
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It was plain to see, in the early stages of the Egyptian revolt, Hillary Clinton was in sync with Bibi Netanyahu. Waiting for the shots to be called by Netanyahu and her concerns more about security for Israel than a just FP by the U.S. Plenty of fear was created by the opinion makers in Israel and lobby groups in the U.S. for the Muslim Brotherhood. Obama was compared to Carter and the overthrow of the Shah in Iran by Khomeiny. Cold war rhetoric of the worst kind. In a positive way, don’t underestimate the influence of German Chancellor Angela Merkel on visit to Israel two weeks ago. Germany has a lot of economic sway in Egypt and is a close political ally of Israel. Merkel and Obama were in full sync on statements about Egypt and the path to follow. Hillary Clinton must believe what is good for Israel in the Middle-East is good for the U.S. Old FP and very damaging stance in the region as opportunity for democracy evolves. Hillary is a friend of Israel, not Obama and never will as the right-wing politics of Netanyahu tries to avoid peace talks.
Mubarak listened to no one except his son Gamal when his Presidency was already lost.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
I mention the theory side (international affairs, political theory) in connection with how this has played out, because Hillary and others are proceeding on the basis of a traditional concept of the role of USA and a traditional concept of how the international world functions. Obama is using a different model, involving regional coalitions. It’s not that the traditionalists disagree, it’s that they to this point do not conceive of the USA role that way and it makes no sense to them. Will ask around about writings to link to – it’s not my area, something I’ve learned about in conversations over the past year or so.
Throughout this event, I’ve been reading Jim Douglass’ JFK And The Unspeakable about that president’s experience with his ambassador to S. Vietnam, Henry C. Lodge, with his military advisors, and how that went for him.
Knowing about his efforts toward peace and watching Obama’s struggles is very unnerving.
When I read what the envoy said during the video conference I knew exactly what had happened and that the WH would disown the comment.
Hillary CLinton has always and still has an agenda. If she thinks it benefits her, she does it.
This was a foul up of the first order. She blew it big time. The diplomatic community saw what transpired and understood it well.
Obama handled this exactly right.
This isn’t the first time Clinton has said something in public that was not the US policy. She has done this before.
To keep Mubarak would have endorsed a bloody crackdown and if anyone thinks Clinton would care about the Egyptian people if that was to happen, you are wrong.
I’m with Samatha Powers. Clinton is a monster.
With Clinton it Always all about her.
The 3 a.m call came and Clinton screwed it up but good.
If she thinks it benefits her, she does it.
Benefits her with respect to what? At the age of 65, she’s not running in 2012 as a spoiler. And less likely to run at age 69.
The Secretary of State position is the capstone of her career. Her agenda is likely to excel at that. And helping Obama’s foreign policy succeed does that better than any other agenda.
Most people operate under the principle that if it benefits them (in whatever way), they do it. The personalization of politics is not a helpful way to evaluate policy. People change their goals; the dynamics of “office politics” change as situations change.
I never claimed Clinton was rational. The Tuzla story says a lot.
In Africa, she made a public statement about North Korea that wasn’t US policy and the WH had to refute it.
There’s been a lot of this type of thing.
If she were good at the job, I’d say so.
Mother Jones has some short articles about the Keystone Pipeline going back to last October. It’s a good example.
I don’t know what she thinks would benefit her, but I am positive that she does what she believes will do so.
I agree with most of what you have written here but this is absurd:
There is nothing in Jimmy Carter’s history before or after this event that would lead anything rational person to conclude that he simply shrugged while innocent protestors were slaughtered. Carter is one of the nation’s preeminent humanitarians and this decision, which history has shown to be the wrong one, was not one he would have made lightly.
You disrespect an amazing man in American history to characterize him in this way.
I tell the truth.