Perhaps it is time for Obama to return to Egypt and make another speech telling Muslims how sorry we are to be Americans.
Or better yet, quit being naive Obama and recognize radical Islamists need to attack us just as you needed to attack GW because it takes citizen attention away from their plight. All demogogues need a whipping boy!
What we can and should do is extract a price from radical Islamists for their own actions. That is called retribution and it is time we began to place a price and cost on our friendship.
You cannot buy loyalty.
Will Egypt and Libya and the entire Middle East bite Obama in the behind?
President clueless! Stay tuned. (See 1, 1a and 1b below)
---
Do real people live in California? (See 2 below.)
---
Romney gets it but the press and media cannot allow him that fact because they must protect their messiah.
They attack Romney for sticking up for America and free speech while Obama, Hillary go on their apology tour. (See 3 and 3a below.)
---
More Americans killed by radicals? (See 4 below.)
Obama continues to campaign oblivious to reality while the State Department brings out the shovel and broom and cleans up after him for is confused position vis a vis Egypt? (See 4a below.)
---
Dick
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Egypt and Libya, Obama's Frankenstein
By Camie Davis
In Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein is responsible for creating a monster. Realizing his mistake, however, Victor becomes horrified of his own creation. Victor grows even more despondent with the knowledge that the monster he created is guilty of murder.
This is the point in the story where the similarities between Victor and Obama, who have both created monsters, end. One is horrified and remorseful over the monster he created. The other feels no remorse. It is left to the reader to decide if this lack of remorse is due to Obama's inability to recognize that he has created a monster. Or is remorse missing because the monster is exactly what Obama intended to create in the first place?
The civilized world was horrified, yet not surprised to see the monster Obama created rear its ugly head in Egypt and in Libya. Many were equally disturbed by the actions of an administration bent on convincing people that the monster is tame and wouldn't hurt a fly if only people would quit prodding it with the stick of religious bigotry. After all, monsters have feelings too.
The Obama administration acted quickly to distance itself from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo's apology that seemed to justify the monster's behavior in Egypt. After all, it is an election year. In an interview with Steve Kroft for 60 Minutes, Obama said of the apology, "In an effort to cool the situation down, it didn't come from me, it didn't come from Secretary Clinton. It came from people on the ground who are potentially in danger."
In other words, "I didn't try to pat the monster on the head. And I didn't try to blame the people who made the monster mad." When in fact, that's precisely what Obama has done and taught his administration to do from the minute he was sworn into office.
Since coming into office, Obama has used the platform of his presidency to continuously laud Islam, portray Muslims as victims of Islamophobia, and to defend the rights of Muslims around the world before defending the rights of U.S. citizens. He has become the poster boy and puppet of the Organization of the Islamic Conference who for over a decade has systematically worked to criminalize the "defamation of Islam" and to protect Islam from "blasphemy," i.e. telling the truth about it. In yearly resolutions at the UN on "combating defamation of religions" the OIC complains that, "Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism." That claim would be hysterical if it weren't so tragic.
To the delight of the OIC, Obama and his administration have worked hard to reprogram America's collective consciousness regarding Islam by instructing us that: Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, Muslims who kill in the name of Islam or Mohammad don't really represent Islam, and that America never has been, nor will be in a war with Islam. Such are the nuts and bolts of building a Frankenstein.
In his 2009 Cairo speech Obama said, "I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear." He continued, "As a student of history I understand more about civilization's debt to Islam . . . I also know that Islam has always been a part of America's story." He failed to mention that the most significant chapter of that story happened on 9/11/01.
At a White House interfaith dinner honoring Ramadan in 2009, Obama reiterated, "The contribution of Muslims to the United States are too long to catalog because Muslims are so interwoven into the fabric of our communities and our country."
In 2010 in Mumbai, India, Obama said, "Islam embodies a religion of peace, fairness and tolerance." How appropriate to say in a country where hundreds of people have been killed by Islamic terrorists. Who cares about the feelings of the victims' families? It's the Muslims' feelings. stupid.
The same sentiment was echoed in his address to the Turkish Parliament and in Indonesia. He said, "Let me say this as clearly as I can. The United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical. We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over so many centuries to shape the world for the better, including my own country."
Helping him build the monster, John Brennan of Homeland Security and Counterrorism said, "Tolerance and diversity define Islam," while Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough added that mosques were a "typically American place."
Backing his rhetoric with policy, Obama gave NASA a new charge. The 21st century final frontier; going forth into Muslim countries to bolster their feelings. NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in an interview with al-Jazeera that NASA was not only a space exploration agency but also an, "earth improvement agency." Bolden said, "When I became the NASA administrator, Obama charged me with three things. One, he wanted me to help inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering." There's that touchy feely thing again. Is it any wonder that workers at the US Embassy in Cairo were worried about the feelings of Muslims?
Besides NASA, Obama's monster reared its head in the Department of Justice. In 2011, Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole said, "I recently directed all components of the Department of Justice to re-evaluate their training efforts in a range of areas, from community outreach to national security." This "reevaluation" included the removal of all references to Islam in connection with any investigation of jihad terror activity perpetrated by, you guessed it, adherents to Islam. Think Fort Hood. A Muslim cries "Allahu Akbar!" before killing soldiers and citizens on U.S. soil, but the administration won't call it an act of jihad or terrorism.
In helping Cole, Dwight C. Holton, former assistant U.S. Attorney, emphasized that training materials for the FBI would be purged of everything politically incorrect, i.e. purged of any insinuation that a terrorist act might be committed in the name of Islam. Holton said, "I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for. They will not be tolerated." Imagine if he condemned acts of terrorism as strongly as he condemned political incorrectness.
Holton said that he discussed the FBI training materials with Attorney General Eric Holder. He told Holder that the materials were "egregiously false," and that Holder was "firmly committed to making sure that this is over" and that "we're going to fix it." Holton said that this "fix" was particularly urgent because the rejected training materials "pose a significant threat to national security, because they play into the false narrative propagated by terrorists that the United States is at war with Islam." Yet another example of blaming the supposed stick that prods the monster, rather than blaming the monster.
The aforementioned Deputy NSA Denis McDonough reiterated Obama's focus on America's indebtedness to Islam, rather than finding it necessary for national security to focus on the dangers of Islamists. In praise of Obama's Cairo speech, McDonough said, "So the message the President wants to send is not different, frankly, than the one he's been sending since he was inaugurated, namely that we believe that this is an opportunity for us in the United States, who, frankly, have arrived at a place here based on many of the advances that come out of the Muslim world, be it science out of Baghdad, be it math and technology out of Al-Andalus or otherwise."
Three years later is it any surprise that McDonough chose to call the video used as justification for the attacks in Egypt and Libya "truly abhorrent" rather than calling the attacks abhorrent? Yet, another example of blaming the supposed stick that prods the monster rather than the actions of the monster. While describing the utopian vision of learning to live with the monster, McDonough said that he endorsed efforts to create "a world where the dignity of all people and all faiths is respected," i.e., a world where people shut-up and tolerate the murderous behavior of Muslims who get their feelings hurt. "This work takes on added urgency given the truly abhorrent video that has offended so many people -- Muslims, and non-Muslims alike -- in our country and around the world."
After the horrors committed by the monster in Egypt and Libya, Obama told Egyptian President Morsi that he still "rejects efforts to denigrate Islam." No surprise there.
What is most telling about this sordid, pathetic tale is the way that some of the embassy officials chose to use their time as the monster neared the embassy. They tweeted. In their Obama-induced delusion they actually thought a tweet would stop the monster their leader had created. That is one of the scariest parts of the tale. That an adult, working for the U.S. government, could be that stupid, passive and appeasing when being threatened and then attacked. And Obama is counting on "we the people" being that stupid, passive and appeasing too.
Most journalists have figured out by now that the public isn't outraged at Mitt Romney, but that there is growing dismay with a president asleep at the switch on the anniversary of 9/11 and who marked the day the news broke of the assassination of four American diplomats with a trip to Vegas for campaigning and fundraising. The president's chest thumping on foreign policy is classic insecurity manifesting itself in an empty boastfulness made not so much offensive as dismaying by the back drop of growing chaos across the Middle East. This incompetent amateur may belive in his heart that he is master of all he surveys, but the overwhelming evidence of the fact that he is in far over his head grows to mountain-sized enormity. The Guns of August seem to be replaying themselves in Septemebr and October of 2012 but the president is on autopilot and the Manhattan-Beltway Media Elite have agreed that it is inappropriate to raise a voice against this drift. Geoffrey Dawson lives!
Only Obama's MSM fan-club doesn't see the connection between the growing chaos and the president's cluelessness, though if pressed as to what they expected when early on their favoritist president ever got the Nobel Prize and traveled to Cairo for speechifying that would bring the Arab world to a quick and orderly move to democracy and full rights for women and religious minorities with Iranian disarmament thrown in, they might admit that a second term would be useful to the accomplishment of these goals. The horrified masses outside of the Manhattan-Beltway media bubble wonder what in the world the world would look like with four more years of Chance the Gardener as POTUS, but MSM is untroubled.
Their job is to oganize the assualt on Romney, as CBS' Jan Crawford (heir to Mary Mapes?) did so wonderfully well on tape before yesterday's statement by Mitt Romney. The Borg of the Manhattan-Beltway media elite had decided on a narrative and organized for its development and transmission. Oops. The curtain was up.
Key takeaway: The press didn't care what Romney had to say. He could have said "I am withdrawing from the race." He could have said he'd had a call from Ahmadinejad asking to meet. He could have announced he was flying to Cairo. None of it would not have mattered to the MSMers! They had their questions down. This is the reality of the MSM palace guard revealed and undeniable: Their job is to bleed Romney so their guy can get another four years.
None of their scheming matters. What matters is the reaction of the voters to this clueless president and this conniving press. Here is the reality fo the election:
8.2% unemployment (actually around 11% if the hopeless are factored in.) Looming tax hikes that will further destroy growth and the rollout of Obamacare that will lead to premium shock and reduced care and downward pressure on growth and unemployment. Iran thrusting for nukes and Israel pointing to the ticking clock. Cairo and other Arab cities burning and mobs massing. China launching new ships and initiatives; Russia hostile and grasping; Europe teetering.
This is why Mitt Romney will win: Voters see and know this. Whether pollsters are doing their job or not on "likely voter screens" and "turnout models" doesn't change the facts on the ground. The president has failed, on every front and in spectacular fashion.
True, he may not know it. He may be gliding through the final four months of his presidency absolutely convinced he's king of the world, but he's a failure. The country doesn't re-elect failure, no matter how urgently fellow failed and aging "journalists" or their young acolytes --"What's our question Jan?"-- desperately want him to be thought a success.
Today I am joined by a returned Mark Steyn (whose After America has just been iussed in paperback with a new and alarming but funny forward) and by Lileks whose Bleat today is not to be missed (nor is his new novel,The Graveyard Special.)
Hours two and three feature one of my long chats, this one with Robert Kaplan, whose new The Revenge of Geography, is a tour of the bubbling cauldron of the world. Kaplan is not a harsh critic of the president and in fact gives him good grades for much of his foreign policy, but Kaplan knows what our Navy means, and he knows what the Obama assault on it and the defense budget mean as well. Kaplan is also a very cold-eyed realist when it comes to Russia and anyone reading The Revenge of Geography would not laugh off Romney's warnings but would be shocked at Obama's dismissiveness of the Putin-era Russia.
1b)
Krauthammer: We're Seeing The "Collapse Of The Obama Policy On The
"What we are seeing on the screen is the meltdown, collapse of the Obama policy on the Muslim world," Charles Krauthammer said on the panel segment of FOX News' "Special Report" tonight. "The irony is that it began in Cairo, in the same place where the speech he made in the beginning of his presidency in which he said, you wanted a new beginning with mutual respect, implying under the other presidents, particularly Bush, there was a lack of mutual respect. Which was an insult to the United States, which had gone to war six times in the last 20 years on behalf of oppressed Muslims, in Kuwait, in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere."
"So to imply that we somehow had mistreated Muslims which was the premise of his speech and how the Iraq War had inflamed the Arab world against us. Well there was no storming of the U.S. embassy in Cairo in those days," the FOX News contributor and syndicated columnist said.
"What we're seeing now is al-Qaedaistan developing in Libya, meltdown of our relations with Egypt, you have riots in Yemen, attacks on our embassy in Tunisia. This entire premise that we want to be loved and respected, we'll apologize, has now yielded all of these results and these are the fruits of apology and retreat and lack of confidence in our own principles," Krauthammer concluded.
"So to imply that we somehow had mistreated Muslims which was the premise of his speech and how the Iraq War had inflamed the Arab world against us. Well there was no storming of the U.S. embassy in Cairo in those days," the FOX News contributor and syndicated columnist said.
"What we're seeing now is al-Qaedaistan developing in Libya, meltdown of our relations with Egypt, you have riots in Yemen, attacks on our embassy in Tunisia. This entire premise that we want to be loved and respected, we'll apologize, has now yielded all of these results and these are the fruits of apology and retreat and lack of confidence in our own principles," Krauthammer concluded.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)There Is No California
Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line.
Consider the disconnects: California’s combined income and sales taxes are among the nation’s highest, but the state’s annual deficit is still about $16 billion. It is estimated that more than 2,000 upper-income Californians are leaving per week to flee high taxes and costly regulations, yet the state government wants to raise taxes even higher. California’s business climate already ranks near the bottom in most surveys. Its teachers are among the highest paid, on average, in the nation, but its public-school students consistently test near the bottom of the nation in both math and science.
The state’s public employees enjoy some of the nation’s most generous pensions and benefits, but California’s retirement systems are underfunded by about $300 billion. The state’s gas taxes — at over 49 cents per gallon — are among the highest in the nation, but its once-unmatched freeways, like 101 and 99, for long stretches have degenerated into potholed, clogged nightmares unchanged since the early 1960s.
The state wishes to borrow billions of dollars to develop high-speed rail, beginning with a little-traveled link between Fresno and Corcoran — a corridor already served by money-losing Amtrak. Apparently, coastal residents like the idea of European-style high-speed rail — as long as the noisy and dirty construction does not begin in their backyards.
As gasoline prices soar, California chooses not to develop millions of barrels of untapped oil and even more natural gas off its shore and beneath its interior. Home to bankrupt green companies like Solyndra, California has mandated that a third of all the energy provided by state utilities soon must come from renewable energy sources – largely wind and solar, which currently provide about 11 percent of the state’s electricity and almost none of its transportation fuel.
How to explain the seemingly inexplicable? “California” is a misnomer. There is no such state. Instead there are two radically different cultures and landscapes with little in common, the two equally dysfunctional in quite different ways. Apart they are unworldly; together, a disaster.
A postmodern narrow coastal corridor runs from San Diego to Berkeley; there the weather is ideal, the gentrified affluent make good money, and values are green and left-wing. This Shangri-La is juxtaposed to a vast impoverished interior, from the southern desert to the northern Central Valley, where life is becoming premodern.
On the coast, blue-chip universities like Cal Tech, Berkeley, Stanford, and UCLA in pastoral landscapes train the world’s doctors, lawyers, engineers, and businesspeople. In the hot interior of blue-collar Sacramento, Turlock, Fresno, and Bakersfield, well over half the incoming freshmen in the California State University system must take remedial math and science classes.
In postmodern Palo Alto, a small cottage costs more than $1 million. Two hours away, in premodern and now-bankrupt Stockton, a bungalow the same size goes for less than $100,000.
In the interior, unemployment in many areas is over 15 percent. The theft of copper wire is reaching epidemic proportions. Thousands of the shrinking middle class have fled the interior for the coast or for nearby no-income-tax states. To fathom the nearly unbelievable statistics — as California’s population grew by 10 million from the mid-1980s to 2005, its number of Medicaid recipients increased by 7 million; one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients now reside in California — visit the state’s hinterlands.
But in the Never-Never Land of Apple, Facebook, Google, Hollywood, and the wine country, millions live in an idyllic paradise. Coastal Californians can afford to worry about trivia — and so their legislators seek to outlaw foie gras, shut down irrigation projects in order to save the three-inch-long Delta smelt, and allow children to have legally recognized multiple parents.
But in the less feel-good interior, crippling regulations curb timber, gas and oil, and farm production. For the most part, the rules are mandated by coastal utopians who have little idea where the fuel for their imported cars comes from, or how the redwood is cut for their decks, or who grows the ingredients for their Mediterranean lunches of arugula, olive oil, and pasta.
On the coast, it’s politically incorrect to talk of illegal immigration. In the interior, residents see first-hand the bankrupting effects on schools, courts, and health care when millions arrive illegally without English-language fluency or a high-school diploma — and send back billions of dollars in remittances to Mexico and other Latin American countries.
The drive from Fresno to Palo Alto takes three hours, but you might as well be rocketing from Earth to the moon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3)Romney Gets It Right: It Was 'Disgraceful'
By Daren Jonescu
The accusation, delivered forcefully by the Obama campaign and gently by John Sununu., that Mitt Romney was being untowardly political when he stepped forward to call the Obama administration's response to the Libyan embassy attack "disgraceful" perfectly illustrates one major reason the West is in (final?) decline.
In this age when Islamists have made it a matter of policy to cite any unflattering mention of Islam as an excuse to kill as many non-Muslims as possible, the administration's initial apologies for the alleged insult to Islam delivered by an unknown movie were a de facto invitation to violence. To follow that up, once the murders had begun, by prefacing Hillary Clinton's "strongest possible" objection to the U.S. Embassy attack with yet another apology revealed either a clinical case of battered wife syndrome on a national scale, or something more sinister.
President Obama, using almost identical language, said:
Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, but there is absolutely no justification to [sic] this kind of senseless violence.
Romney, who has frustrated conservatives with his recent comments on other issues, finally got one right: the administration's response is indeed "disgraceful." The strongest word the President and the Secretary of State used in their official response was "deplorable" -- and this word was used not to describe the unprovoked murder and public humiliation of Ambassador Stevens -- which is judged merely objectionable, unjustified, and senseless (actually, it makes perfect sense, as Peter Wilson points out) -- but rather to describe the denigration of Islam in a movie.
What is truly deplorable is the instinct to qualify every "strongest possible" condemnation with expressions of sympathy for the killers' perspective, though disapproving of the extreme nature of their response. The constant emphasis on the word "unjustified" in describing the attacks, in conjunction with the repeated empathy regarding the "denigration" of Islam, carries a not so subtle message of moral equivalency and appeasement: "You overreacted, and we can't accept that, but of course we have to try to be more understanding and respectful, too."
This is the language of one trying to make his case while taking account of the other side's legitimate concerns. It is the language of civilized negotiation. But civilized negotiation requires civilized adversaries. Has anyone among the actively militant Islamists and their passively militant fellow travelers ever said, "If only you would stop denigrating our religion, we could happily live side by side in peace and harmony"?
Have you ever felt denigrated by someone's words, and considered responding by attacking an embassy, beheading a journalist and posting the video on the internet, or devoting decades, and millions of dollars, to trying to infiltrate a foreign nation's government and sway its public policy in your favor?
Has a verbal insult to your religion or personal practices ever provoked you to attempt to take over the world, to establish your religion or practices as the governing set of rules for all nations, and to kill or oppress everyone who would not submit to your law and convert to your faith?
Obviously not. Humans with even a modicum of sanity do not react to insults that way. By pretending that the "denigration" of Islam has any causal connection to the Islamists' "objectionable acts," America's sensitive leaders are inadvertently ascribing to the Islamists the psyche of the certifiably insane.
They are not insane. They are bent on establishing a global caliphate. They are prepared to kill to achieve their theocratic goals. They kill when they can, where they can, but not as an unhinged lunatic kills -- they kill when they believe killing will be effective. If they thought it practically feasible or useful, they would kill more -- many more. And, conversely, when they consider killing less effective than other means, they refrain from killing. (This explains the overt disapproval of the embassy attacks by certain Islamist political entities in the region. It reflects an internal dispute over tactics.)
To diminish and even sympathize with their position by reducing it to hurt feelings, even while "condemning" their methods as "objectionable," is to help pave the road to the global caliphate. More immediately, it is to belittle the individual pain and death of the Americans killed in the Benghazi embassy attack. It is to project the notion that Islam is somehow particularly unfairly treated in the world, thus justifying the Islamists' hatred of the West (though not their more "unjustified" responses). It is to commit a moral outrage against the millions of Arabs and North Africans who were encouraged to yearn for their first glimpse of something like freedom, only to find that Arab Spring was a sick euphemism for murder, mayhem, and the Muslim Brotherhood -- in short, for the gradual Talibanization of their countries.
The Obama administration's response is disgraceful, and Romney was right to say so. The accusation from various sources that this is "playing politics" is absurd. This is politics -- not "Politics, the TV Show," but the real thing. If there is to be a moratorium on criticizing one's opponent on sensitive issues during a presidential campaign, then this means Obama must get a free ride, at this most momentous of hours, on precisely those issues which make his defeat so important.
The suggestion that Romney's "campaign rhetoric" shows disrespect for the dead, or for the seriousness of the crisis, is outrageous: the disrespect was shown by the appeasers and apologists for Islamism who have promoted a climate that emboldens killers, and who then, when the inevitable happens, give heartless jack-in-the-box speeches about "objectionable" responses to "denigration."
Summation in the form of a post-script: in the days following the embassy attack, Secretary Clinton has described a stupid internet movie about Muhammad as "disgusting." Interestingly, Romney, along with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, used that same word, "disgusting" -- to describe Ambassador Stevens' murder. This simple juxtaposition illustrates the difference between those who look at the world and see reality, and those who look at the world in desperate search of vindication for their irrational theories of moral equivalency and systemic injustice. Those theories, if allowed to stand, will destroy Western civilization -- assuming they haven't already done so.
3a)Sounding and Acting Like Reagan, Romney Has Them Terrified
By Fred J. Eckert
I knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a friend of mine. And Mitt Romney is reminding me an awful lot of Ronald Reagan.
The comments for which Romney is being so relentlessly and viciously scorned by Barack Obama and his merry band of media puppets sounds to me exactly like comments Ronald Reagan would have made.
It is indeed "disgraceful" for the US government to respond to the threat of an attack against an American embassy by issuing a statement condemning "the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims" and denouncing hurting their feelings as an "abuse" of free speech - and then as the embassy was being overrun and our flag burned issuing another statement saying they stand by that.
It's disgraceful that the Obama Administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.
Mitt Romney was simply but forcefully expressing, as Ronald Reagan so often did, what most Americans think and how they feel. And you can bet the Obama campaign realized this and found it frightening.
They said that they were "shocked" that Romney "would choose to launch a political attack" -- the usual and expected sort of political statement gibberish -- but isn't it revealing what they did? The Obama White House asked its media allies to report that the statement that Romney took such exception to "doesn't reflect the views of the U.S. government."
What? Isn't a U.S. Embassy an important part of the U.S. government, and all the more so when that embassy happens to be located in a country of great consequence to U.S. national interests? Isn't the U.S. Ambassador who leads that embassy - as anyone who is or ever has been one loves to remind people - the personal representative of the President of the United States? Wasn't the Obama Administration claiming that the U.S. government does not reflect the views of the U.S. government?
No matter. The media fell in line and trumpeted the charade.
Only days before, Democratic Party strategists had been boasting that this year they were going to turn on its head the usual order in which the Republican candidate for president is more trusted on foreign policy and the Democrat perceived to be weak because they were going to tout Obama "successes" overseas as a way to offset his failures at home.
And only a week earlier, Obama had in his acceptance speech mocked Romney as "new" to foreign affairs, doing so with supreme confidence that the media would not point out that he himself had claimed that his having lived in the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, between the ages of six and ten counted for foreign policy experience.
How could Obama and his media allies counter the words that Romney had said that were resonating so well with average Americans?
First: Ignore what Romney actually said. Ignore the fact that the Obama White House itself claimed to take exception to what Romney had taken exception to.
Next: Ignore the fact that Barack Obama and John Kerry constantly carped about George W. Bush's handling of crises and instead pretend that there is something inherently wrong about a candidate for President criticizing an incumbent president during a crisis.
Then: Attack the very idea that Mitt Romney had dared say anything.
President Obama held a press conference September 12th at which he, naturally, bemoaned the killing of Americans and violence and spoke vaguely about justice being done. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood at his side. So many questions come to mind -- but neither of them took questions and soon Obama was off to Vegas to campaign and raise money.
Quite a contrast with what the media had in store for Mitt Romney. Certain journalists banned together and plotted a strategy for hammering Romney. They deliberately conspired to make it appear that the key thing that should be on the minds of the American people that day was the thought that it is almost beneath contempt that the challenger would challenge the Obama Administration for placing our first emphasis on apologetic worrying that some Muslims might have had their feelings hurt. Not one reporter at Romney's news conference asked him why he thought that was wrong. Instead every - every - question put to him was a not-so-subtle denunciation of his having dared to criticize.
Calling Romney's statement "toughly worded," one asked, "Do you regret the tone?" Another asked if he thought it "appropriate" to criticize when the crisis was "unfolding." Another asked if he thought he was "jumping the gun."
Note the difference: Barack Obama, who can depend on the media to fawn over him rather than challenge him, took no chance that some difficult question might come his way. Mitt Romney, who risks being accused of making a gaffe if he says hello, stood there like a man, like a leader, like a real President, stood firm and forcefully articulated why the United States needs to act like the great and powerful country that it is. Just like Reagan would. Check it out.
Barack Obama then sat down with one of his main sponsors, CBS' 60 Minutes, and said silly things such as that Mitt Romney shoots first and aims later without any fear they would remind him that he was the guy who denounced the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police department for acting "stupidly" while admitting he had no idea of any facts in the case to which he had referred. And without any fear that even such strong evidence that his foreign policy was a complete debacle they might ask him if he still believes, as he claimed the last time he sat down with 60 Minutes, that he is at least America's fourth greatest President.
Obama and Hillary Clinton then effectively hid, even though they had little cause to worry that their media allies would turn on them and ask any truly difficult questions about possible dereliction of duty and whether they stand by their claims that what happened in Cairo and Benghazi was really just the work of a few misguided people rather than clear evidence that radical Islam is at war with us.
They can probably count on the media to cling to the pretext that this violent uproar is simply all about some poorly done and little-viewed film that had been around a couple of months and has little or nothing to do with a deliberate strategy by radical Islamists. The fact that so many Muslims supposedly suddenly got so worked up about it and decided to "protest" on a day that happened to be the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America? What a coincidence! The fact that so many participants in these spontaneous outbursts just happened to have rocket propelled grenade launchers and automatic weapons with them? Well, ah, ah...
Three days after the Cairo and Benghazi attacks, as radical Islamists were conducting assaults against US diplomatic missions and other properties across the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and Asia, the White House Press Secretary stepped forward to assure the American on behalf of President Obama that all this violence and turmoil "is in response not to United States policy, and not to, obviously, the administration, or the American people, but it is in response to a video, a film that we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting."
Got it? What we and the rest of the world were witnessing was nothing more than merely a whole bunch of movie critics run amok.
Don't people who are desperate and terrified that the tide has turned against them have a knack for saying incredibly dopey things?
This is a foreign policy crisis of the highest magnitude. And the more the American people see of it and think about it, the more it will sink in that during this great crisis Mitt Romney sounded and acted as Ronald Reagan would while Barack Obama sounded and acted as Jimmy Carter would.
And this stark contrast is going to help cause a Romney landslide on November 6th.
Fred J. Eckert, author of the book, That's a Crock, Barack, is a former conservative Republican Congressman from New York and twice served as a US Ambassador (to the UN and to Fiji) under President Reagan, who called him "a good friend and valuable advisor." He's retired and lives with his wife in Raleigh, NC.
4) At least 4 casualties in Al Qaeda attack on US-led Sinai peacekeeping mission
Unconfirmed reports of at least four peacekeepers hurt when scores of Salafi Bedouin linked to al Qaeda stormed the Multinational Force’s camp in northern Sinai with grenades, mortars and automatic guns Friday night Sept. 14. The casualties were transferred to the Israeli hospital in Beersheba. The number of casualties and their nationality has not been confirmed. Military and Egyptian sources report that the gunmen drove up to the camp in 50 Toyota pickups, first blocking the roads to the Al Ghora base southwest of El Arish, then knocking over two guard posts. They faced heavy resistance from the international force before torching the facility, plundering its arms and ordnance stores and hoisting the black al Qaeda flag. A second band of 60-70 gunmen then arrived and the firefight continued although an Egyptian force arrived on the scene with 11 armored personnel carriers.
This was the second al-Qaeda-instigated assault on a primarily US target in the Middle East in four days after the murder of four US diplomats including Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi, Libya Tuesday.
The 1,500 troops from the United States and other countries have been posted in Sinai to monitor the 1979 peace accords between Egypt and Israel.
The 1,500 troops from the United States and other countries have been posted in Sinai to monitor the 1979 peace accords between Egypt and Israel.
The armed Bedouin gangs claimed their attack on the MFO camp was part of the Islamist protest sweeping the Middle East against an anti-Muslim video.
4a)
Obama team backtracks from Egypt not an ally remark |
| By Dr. Aaron Lerner Suffice it to say that if PM Netanyahu made a similar odd remark and it was followed up in a series of what at best can be termed mediocre responses that the Israeli media would be blasting him and his team.] White House clarifies Obama's statement that Egypt is not an 'ally' By Josh Rogin President Barack Obama didn't intend to signal any change in the U.S.-Egypt relationship last night when he said Egypt is not an "ally," the White House told The Cable today. In an interview with Telemundo Wednesday night, Obama said that the U.S. relationship with the new Egyptian government was a "work in progress," and emphasized that the United States is counting on the government of Egypt to better protect the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, which was attacked by protesters on Sept. 11. "I don't think that we would consider them an ally, but we don't consider them an enemy," Obama said. "They're a new government that is trying to find its way. They were democratically elected. I think that we are going to have to see how they respond to this incident." That comment had Egypt watchers scratching their heads, especially since technically, Egypt was designated as a Major Non-NATO Ally in 1989 when Congress first passed the law creating that status, which gives them special privileges in cooperating with the United States, especially in the security and technology arenas. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor told The Cable Thursday that the administration is not signaling a change in that status. "I think folks are reading way too much into this," Vietor said. "‘Ally' is a legal term of art. We don't have a mutual defense treaty with Egypt like we do with our NATO allies. But as the president has said, Egypt is longstanding and close partner of the United States, and we have built on that foundation by supporting Egypt's transition to democracy and working with the new government." Vietor referred to Obama's Wednesday phone call with Mohamed Morsy, during which Obama pressed the Egyptian president to ensure the safety and protection of U.S. personnel and facilities in Egypt. Morsy agreed to do so, according to a White House statement on the phone call. "The President said that he rejects efforts to denigrate Islam, but underscored that there is never any justification for violence against innocents and acts that endanger American personnel and facilities," the statement said. "President Morsi expressed his condolences for the tragic loss of American life in Libya and emphasized that Egypt would honor its obligation to ensure the safety of American personnel." Administration sources told The Cable that Obama's "ally" comment was not pre-arranged or prepared by staff and that the question was not anticipated. Nevertheless, Middle East experts said Obama's word choice and tone is likely a reflection of the administration's feeling that Morsy's reaction to the attacks has not been forceful enough. "I think it's a message from Obama that taking a less than assertive position on this is going to cost the [Egyptian] leadership at least rhetorically in the short term," said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "We heard that the Muslim Brotherhood was going to be a cooperative partner and their actions and statements yesterday were not a good example of that." Pre-planned or not, the comments carry weight, Tabler said. He also noted that Obama was surely crafting his message not only for the Egyptians, but also for his American audience as well. The White House has come under fire for a press release from the Cairo embassy issued before the protest started that Republican challenger Mitt Romney slammed as an "apology for our values." As The Cable reported Wednesday, State Department officials in Washington objected to that statement before it was issued -- and the White House later disavowed it -- but it has nevertheless become an issue in the presidential campaign. "It's important to remember, Obama's comment happened in both a security and political context," Tabler said. UPDATE: At Thursday's State Department press briefing, Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed that Egypt remains a Major Non-NATO Ally. Asked if the president misspoke, she said, "I am not going to parse the president's words. |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment