VDH: The Passing Signal Psychodrama

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

When we finally learn the full melodrama of the so-called Signal 1-2 day “scandal” of inviting a leftwing, Trump-despising, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg onto a supposedly secure conference list, involving most of the top Trump security officials, lots of questions need asking and answering.

Most importantly, who exactly had Goldberg’s private number, and ostensibly (in error [?]) could have possibly inserted it into the cleared list of participants in the discussions? Why Goldberg, rather than some random person of some 345 million Americans? 

So why in the world would any top Trump officials or their staffers ever even have Goldberg’s private contact information—given his quite public record of a) fabricating stories with unnamed sources, and b) suffering from a decade of chronic Trump derangement syndrome? 

Did Goldberg know the mechanisms that had prompted and continued his stealthy presence on the secure discussions? 

Why did citizen Goldberg not simply come clean on day one that he realized he was mistakenly included in key national security conference communications, to which he did not belong, and thus should be obviously excluded immediately? Why stealthily listen in for eleven some days? Was the idea of informing his hosts of his own improper presence too old-fashioned morality? 

Did Goldberg’s publicizing these discreet discussions really affect in any way at all the otherwise completely successful mission to neutralize years of appeased Houthis aggression and begin to end their veritable destruction of Red Sea international maritime commerce? 

How did this blunder rank with prior diplomatic and military screw-ups? 

Did it rate with the indiscretion of Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s January 1950 Press Club speech de facto excluding South Korea from the American defense umbrella—an omission that may or may not have contributed to the June 1950 North Korean invasion of the South? 

Was it comparable to Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie’s assurance to Saddam Hussein, “We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait”— a needless remark that may have mistakenly green-lighted his 1990 invasion of Kuwait? 

Was it comparable to Barack Obama’s March 2012 “hot mic” quid-pro-quo assurance to Russian president Medvedev? Obama got caught in front of the world promising Putin that he would have “flexibility” on American-Eastern European missile defense—if Putin gave him “space” during his “last” election. 

And indeed, it is forgotten that both kept their promises: Obama foolishly dismantled American-sponsored Eastern European plans for missile defense, and Putin stayed put for Obama, perhaps empowering Obama’s successful election cycle—postponing his preplanned invasions of Ukraine until 2014. Careerism at the expense of national security? 

Did it rank with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Milley, stealthily contacting his Chinese communist counterpart Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng, to warn him that he would likely prewarn the People’s Liberation Army leader, if he, Milley, had self-diagnosed his Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump as supposedly dangerously likely to trigger an existential war? 

Why would Hillary Clinton weigh in given her illegal use of a private server to transmit classified State Department information and her subsequent destruction of subpoenaed communication devices? 

Why would the serial fabulist Susan Rice weigh in, given in the election-year 2012 she flat-out lied to the nation on five Sunday news shows, claiming preposterously that the deadly preplanned terrorist attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi were actually unexpected “spontaneous” demonstrations incited by anger over an anti-Muslim video? Ditto her fallacious Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl “honor” narrative or her lie about the removal of Syrian WMD. 

Why would Leon Panetta weigh in, when he was one of the supposed “51 intelligence authorities” in 2020 who ridiculously claimed Hunter Biden’s FBI-authenticated laptop had all the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence disinformation effort—a lie designed to arm Joe Biden before the last 2020 debate, and which might well have affected the 2020 election and for which Panetta has never apologized? 

In the end, this was a blunder, but also what the left calls a “teachable moment”, in which a) all future similar conferences should be either held in person or its participants triple-checked on a secure line; and b) all Trump high appointees and their staffers should know enough to have nothing to do with those who wake up each morning wishing to destroy them – and go to bed each night lamenting that they have not done enough to advance that destruction.