There's a Phone Ringing in the White House And No One is Answering

“It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing — something’s happening in the world… Who do you want answering that phone?” (Hillary Clinton 2008 presidential campaign ad.)

The phone has been ringing off the hook. Presidents and prime ministers whose nations are under assault from the collapse of order in the Middle East are looking for leadership from the United States.

Somebody! Anybody! Answer the damn phone!

The phone rang on Sept. 11, 2012 too. It wasn’t at 3 a.m. It wasn’t even at night. The phone rang right at the beginning of the formal drinking hour – 5 p.m.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Getty Images)

The call came from the Department of State to their leader, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her response was immediate and decisive.

“Tell them I’m not here.”

The president didn’t get a phone call. He received the information directly from the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at a meeting in the White House.

Three years have passed and we still don’t know what he said. We have to assume that our top two military leaders said, “We’ve already scrambled FEST. What more do you want us to do?”

That is the default reaction of the military when we have people under attack. The Foreign Emergency Support Teams are trained to respond in exactly this situation.

We now know that they were not sent. Why not? We are told that one of Mrs. Clinton’s top aides, ruled it out. Why?

After three years the mainstream media still has shown no interest in that question nor, indeed, what the president and the secretary of state were doing that night.

Mrs. Clinton sat before the Select Committee on Benghazi for 11 hours and we now know that she told her daughter that night that the attack in Benghazi was terrorism. She lied to us. Why?

The media had its opportunity to show an interest in Mrs. Clinton’s lies, but they were so in thrall to her performance that the news was drowned out by the applause for her stamina.

We are left to imagine what actually was said in those phone calls between Mrs. Clinton and the president.

7:30 P.M.

BHO: Hillary? Have you talked to anybody yet?

HRC: God no. I had Huma tell them that I wasn’t well and was taking a nap. What did you tell Panetta and Dempsey?

BHO: You don’t want to know.

HRC: Well, sooner or later I have to talk to somebody, but I’ll be damned if I know what to say. We sure can’t tell them about the weapons operation.

BHO: I told you that we were going to get in trouble with your stupid regime change in Libya. You assured me that it was going to be easy. This is what I get for siding with you against my entire national security team. You have to clean this mess up, Hillary.

HRC: Well, what do you want me to say?

BHO: You got the shoe on the wrong foot, Hillary. This is your baby. You come up with something and tell me what I should say. The election is eight weeks from tonight.

HRC: Victoria has been frantically emailing me. We’ll come up with something and I’ll get back to you.

“Something’s happening in the world… Who do you want answering that phone?”

This assumes that the person answering the phone is a competent leader with a sophisticated and informed grasp of the world.

Unfortunately it appears that the entire apparatus of the government was activated, not to respond to terrorism, but to come up with something to blame. And they found it.

10:30 p.m.

HRC: Mr. President, my people have come up with a story.

BHO: This better be good, Hillary.

HRC: When the crazies were climbing over the walls of the Cairo embassy, we planted the story that it was in response to a video that blasphemed The Prophet Mohammed. We’re going with it for Benghazi too.

BHO: This better work for eight weeks, Hillary. Then we don’t care what happens.

“It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing — something’s happening in the world… Who do you want answering that phone?”

I doubt that we will see that commercial in this campaign. The tragedies unfolding from Afghanistan through the Middle East and North Africa and into Europe are the direct result of bad decisions by incompetent amateurs lacking a coherent global view.

After the president, Hillary Clinton was at the top of that team of decision-makers. At every decision point she chose wrong.

It’s 3 a.m. and the phone is ringing at the White House.

“Hello. You’ve reached the White House. For English, press ‘1’ …”

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