A nation must think before it acts.
Consider a scenario. It is one year into Barack Obama’s second term. During his first term, the president and the commander of U.S. Central Command clashed repeatedly over a number of issues, including Iran, Afghanistan and ISIS. The CENTCOM commander was supported by a number of other uniformed officers who believed the president was terribly wrong on national security in general and the Greater Middle East in particular.
President Obama had already accepted the resignation of a well-regarded general when it was revealed that his staff had mocked and criticized the president and his advisers. Subsequently, emails have emerged making it clear that uniformed officers had been secretly working on behalf of President Obama’s Republican opponent, feeding him damaging information.
One email in particular has set off alarm bells: the director of the Joint Staff had written to his mistress, a civilian lawyer working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in the chairman’s office — that there’s no way Obama gets reelected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. We need an insurance policy … ” Investigators wondered what this “insurance policy” regarding the president might be.