Posted on 09/15/2012 1:27:36 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
It was bad enough, two years ago, that Defense Secretary Robert Gates called fringe Florida pastor Terry Jones to ask him not to burn copies of the Koran, or last week, that chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey took his turn to call Jones to ask him to stop publicizing a YouTube video, The Innocence of Muslims. But then on Friday, White House spokesman Jay Carney told the world that the violent protests in Cairo and Benghazi and elsewhere were a “response not to United States policy, and not obviously the administration or the American people,” but were “in response to a video, a film we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting.” Carney repeated the point for emphasis: “This is not a case of protests directed at the United States at large or at U.S. policy, but in response to a video that is offensive to Muslims.”
Carney’s comments lie outside the range of plausible spin, even by Obama administration standards, and if his bosses believe them—as we fear they do—are simply delusional. But they are not without consequence. Nor are Gates’s and Dempsey’s phone calls. They all send the message to America’s enemies that if you kill our diplomats and lay siege to the our embassies, the first move the American government will make is to denounce . . . Americans. Our leaders apparently believe that the way to protect Americans from extremists and terrorists abroad is to tell other Americans to shut up.
What’s next? Where does it go from here? There are more than 300 million ways in which Americans expressing themselves might give offense to those who make it their business to be offended. Maybe it’s some other film, maybe it’s a book or even just a tossed-off phrase that our enemies might seize on to galvanize support for their causes. Is the White House going to put every American crank on speed-dial so it can tell them to shut up whenever a mob gathers outside a U.S. embassy or consulate?
It’s worth noting that virtually every description in our media of the movie that is supposed to have touched off the protests was attended by various aesthetic qualifiers—laughable, crude, amateurish—as if the mobs and their organizers were motivated by considerations of artistic craft. Let’s recall that similar murderous campaigns of terror were waged to protest Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, at the direction of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Would the editorial boards and newsrooms of our leading media debate the merits of White House officials warning prestige novelists to keep their mouths shut lest they anger extremists?
The Constitution was not written on behalf of poets and philosophers and film producers but to enshrine the rights of all citizens. Since 9/11 and our ensuing engagements in the Middle East, there have been appropriate occasions during which the American people have debated how the so-called clash of civilizations might be ameliorated. This is not one of those occasions.
To debate the right of an American to criticize religion does not indicate sophisticated sensitivity to the feelings of others but a willingness to turn tail and abandon our principles at the first sign of a fight. And to take seriously the notion that all those riots and attacks are about a video, not about American principles and power and policy, is silly.
What we have seen unfold in the Middle East over the last week is what distinguishes the region’s societies from our own. The protests in Cairo and Benghazi were not really about the film, the preacher, or Muslim sensitivities. They were an exercise in raw power politics, partly aimed at intramural rivals in the Arab political sphere, but mainly against the United States.
If the reaction of U.S. officials in the face of such an assault is to “condemn . . . efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims” (the initial response of the U.S. embassy in Cairo) and to try to silence individual citizens, there is good reason for the terrorists to believe that, with more acts of terror, they will also change American policies. The unpleasant fact is that the Obama administration has encouraged our adversaries to keep at it.
President Obama believed that to maintain “credibility with the Arab states,” as he once told a group of Jewish leaders, he had to put some daylight between ourselves and Israel. His administration sought desperately to “engage” Iran and Syria, two state sponsors of terror that have been killing Americans for decades. The same Joint Chiefs chairman who told journalists in London that he doesn’t want to be “complicit” in any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities now advises an American citizen to stop alienating Muslim mobs.
A president who began his tenure by going to Cairo to say he considered it his “responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear” should not be surprised that the U.S. embassy in Cairo tweets similar apologetics while it is under siege.
It would be nice to have an American administration that stood up for America, for its people and its principles. It would also make the world far less dangerous for Americans—and for decent people of all faiths.
Egypt and Libya, Obama's Frankenstein "............. blaming the supposed stick that prods the monster rather than the actions of the monster......
......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."
Maybe because the leader of the great Satan was taunting them “Bin Laden is dead, GM is alive!”
of course the MSM and the Dems will deflect the blame to Romney or a video nobody watched to protect Obama from being tarred with that blame
It is indeed embarrassing that administration officials have repeatedly commented upon the film's artistic merits (or lack thereof) - as though that had any bearing on the issue.
They are not Siskal and Ebert. It is not their business to review movies. It is first and foremost their duty to protect the Constitution of the United States, as well as maintain the safety and territorial integrity of the United States.
It is a sorry state of affairs when administration officials resort to bad-mouthing films made by private citizens in the exercise of their 1st Amendment rights in a misguided attempt to garner the approval of semi-literate, muderous rioters in foreign countries and persuade them to "pretty please" stop killing our embassy personnel.
Regards,
The Muslims have been chanting “We have 1 and a half BILLION OSAMAS”.......they are telling us it’s NOT the movie, it’s the killing of Osama. But really, they see our WEAKNESS now.
No, it is not the film. It never was the film. The chants tell us exactly what it was and this slip by the reporter in Libya confirms this has been planned for months. This is the violence we should have expected after Osama was killed.
The liberal way will be to try to bribe them out of fear they will not attack. This is like the kid that is bullied in school and he just gives the bully his lunch or lunch money and runs, hoping he can avoid an altercation. Obama and the left have probably never stood up to physical threats so they weasel out and try to get other people to do what they should do. I don’t foresee Obama or the left of ever seeing the light so to speak.
>> Maybe because the leader of the great Satan was taunting them “Bin Laden is dead, GM is alive!”
Not much reporting the GM bailout was a factor.
What 0bama did do was create the vacuum of Power that has allowed it to come out of the pit.
I have heard the press already trying to pin this on President Bush for advocating spreading democracy to the middle east. At least Bush knew to go slow and to not leave a vacuum of power.
The progressive 0bama and the regime thought fast moving protests instigated using radical elements would give the middle east democracy. People voting in theocracies and radical islamists is not them choosing freedom and no, those choices cannot be brushed aside as...’well that's what they chose and that's how democracy works.’
We will need to retreat from the region for likely decades due to the 0bama policy. We must recreate the contain and control policy, we must go back to not doing business with terrorist countries...and that list just got very long. Some 20 nations or more long.
On the flipside...it is time to start drilling for oil here, it is time to start building refineries here. Both for our own security and for export to the rest of the ‘free world.’ America can rise from this fiasco as a major power, but 0bama must be removed from office. I am not even convinced we can wait until January, heck even until the election.
Everything we've heard so far indicates a complete and willful neglect of duty from the Commander In Chief. This is not just a collapse of 0bama’s naive foreign policy, indications are a complete neglect of duty. Due to this we are now sending Marine rapid response teams to the area(s). Egypt, Libya, the Sudan....I hope they are extraction teams. I got a four word message yesterday from my nephew, “I'm on a boat.” Pray for him and all our Marines being called to this duty.
I suspect Lee Smith’s persective is shared by the majority of those tuned in.
Hollywood must be sleeping.
YES!!!
Will do. God bless them all.
I will pray for your nephew. But I’ll also work harder to make sure the Organizer isn’t elected again - for the sake of people like your nephew. Otherwise, we Citizens are not supporting our military.
Don't forget --- these are the same people who defended the artistic merits of putting a crucifix in a jar of urine and throwing elephant feces on a painting of the Virgin Mary.
I am seriously considering asking the National Endowment for the Arts to give me a grant so I can make a painting of Mohammad covered in feces waiting for his 72 virgins (who are men)
A few months ago there was talk of the ME trying to make the world currency pegged to oil.
I say ...America could do that. Forget gold etc. But also drilling creates jobs, fixes the economy ....there is nothing but an upside from becoming energy secure.
THIS WAS A STAGED TERROSIST ATTACK ON OUR INSTALLATIONS. Zero his propagandists and the circus are once again relying on our stupidity to believe otherwise. Another event with a new catch phrase or excuse to hide the truth.
Hey DUMBASSES......this is ALL about killing Osama, not the stupid movie that no one saw!!!
The way to make the Muslims peaceful is to trim that figure by about half.
Not a pleasant thought, but the only real answer.
As long as the Muslims are weak they learn to ignore small things like a crappy movie, when they grow strong they find everything offensive.
Trim them down, that is the only real answer.
lol.
Those oil barons hate the Volt. lol.
Prayers up. I am angry about my brothers and sisters in arms being *anywhere* in the Middle East right now. These people sincerely want to die for their cause.. Achamdinanut has already promised the twelfth inmam will be here in 2012 which means he is out of time. Billions of DNA compromised, inbred muslims are thinking they have three months to pave the way for their savior. Why on God’s green earth send more of our sons and daughters into that mess. I sincerely hope it is simply an extraction mission. Those folks do not want peace. They want to die in the next three months paving the way for the Global caliphate.
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