“(in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.” — The Urban Dictionary.
Last night in a fit of tolerance I watched President Obama’s campaign speech from Las Vegas, Nevada. There he was in his shirt sleeves giving shout-outs to his friends, supporters and Democrat politicians running for office. Then he spent a few moments praising Chris Stevens, the assassinated U.S. Ambassador in Libya. After that he went into his canned campaign speech of moving forward and other such nonsense. At this point I switched channels and watched some local news about a car chase of bank robbers through the streets of central Los Angeles, which was much more interesting than the Obama’s speech.
My first thoughts while watching Obama’s speech (if your allowed to think while the anointed one speaks) was what in the hell was he doing in Nevada while our embassy in Cairo is under attack and our consulate in Benghazi had been bombed and four U.S. officials, including the ambassador had been violently assassinated by Islamic terrorists? My next observation before changing the channel was that he never once mentioned the words “murdered”, “assassinated”, “terrorists”, “attack” or “radical Islam.” But then why would he? After all he called, and still does, the murders committed at Fort Hood by Major Nidal Malik Hasan “work place violence” even though he yelled “Allāhu Akbar” while pumping out 146 rounds of 9mm ammunition and killing 13 people and wounded 29 others. Instead he mentioned the word “tragedy.” I would like to take a moment to inform President Obama that “tragedy” is associated with earthquakes, tsunamis, accidental house files, and car crashes. Murders, while tragic, are still murders and are classified as crimes!
So while giving the terrorist a pass in Las Vegas Obama, his spokespeople, and the mainstream press decide to attack Mitt Romney for his clear, concise and statesman-like remarks on the events in Egypt and Libya:
“Good morning. Americans woke up this morning with -- with tragic news and felt heavy hearts as they considered that individuals who have served in our diplomatic corps were brutally murdered across the world.
This attack on American individuals and embassies is outrageous, it’s disgusting, it -- it breaks the hearts of all of us who think of these people who have served during their lives the cause of freedom and justice and honor.
We -- we mourn their loss and join together in prayer that the spirit of the Almighty might comfort the families of those who have been so brutally slain.
Four diplomats lost their life, including the U.S. ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, in the attack on our embassy at Benghazi, Libya. And of course with these words I extend my condolences to the grieving loved ones who have left behind, as a result of these who have lost their lives in the service of our nation.
And I know that the people across America are grateful for their service. And we mourn their sacrifice.
America will not tolerate attacks against our citizens and against our embassies. We’ll defend also our constitutional rights of speech and assembly and religion.
We have confidence in our cause in America. We respect our Constitution. We stand for the principles our Constitution protects. We encourage other nations to understand and respect the principles of our Constitution, because we recognize that these principles are the ultimate source of freedom for individuals around the world.
I also believe the administration was wrong to stand by a statement sympathizing with those who had breached our embassy in Egypt, instead of condemning their actions. It’s never too early for the United States government to condemn attacks on Americans and to defend our values.
The White House distanced itself last night from the statement, saying it wasn’t cleared by Washington. That reflects the mixed signals they’re sending to the world.
The attacks in Libya and Egypt underscore that the world remains a dangerous place and that American leadership is still sorely needed. In the face of this violence, American cannot shrink from the responsibility to lead. American leadership is necessary to ensure that events in the region don’t spin out of control. We cannot hesitate to use our influence in the region to support those who share our values and our interests.
Over the last several years, we’ve stood witness to an Arab spring that presents an opportunity for a more peaceful and prosperous, but also poses the potential for peril if the forces of extremism and violence are allowed to control the course of events. We must strive to ensure that the Arab spring does not become an Arab winter. With that, I’m happy to take any questions you may have.”
That’s right — ignore the terrorists killers and attack Romney. Is Obama and his minions in the press that fearful that these attacks will have the same effect on Obama as the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis had and Jimmy Carter. After all doesn’t Rahm Emmanuel believe you should never let a good crisis go to waste. Perhaps he (they) believes his chickens are coming home to roost.
I have heard many comments about Romney’s stepping in to make comments on the events in Egypt and Libya. What does the press think he should do — keep his mouth shut? The business of “politics end at the nations; shore” is blatant nonsense. I would imagine Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush would have appreciated that sentiment. Politics are the business of the American people and they don’t end anywhere. If Romney had made no comment he would have been chastised for not caring or having the intelligence to understand foreign affairs. Romney is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. That’s the nature of politics, so get over it Mr. Obama with you thin skin and man-up and tell the American people the truth.
Eric Erickson of Red States offers the following suggestion for Mitt Romney and how he should handle this crisis, suggestions I totally agree with:
“The Romney campaign would be well advised to be delicate and let surrogates handle most of the partisan shots, but there are absolutely some valid points Mitt Romney can and should raise.
First, this was the second September 11th anniversary since Osama Bin Laden was killed. Subsequent to his death several other top Al Qaeda leaders have been killed. Islamic radicals still demand revenge. It was quite foreseeable that Islamic radicals would find an excuse to attack us in some way on this September 11th. Why wasn’t the American security presence at American embassies in North Africa and the Middle East boosted prior to 9/11? Sending Marines to Libya now seems a bit too little too late.
Second, when the United States picked the side of rebels in Libya many media outlets reported the rebels also had ties to Al Qaeda. What happened in Libya was a foreseeable outcome. Who did the President think would get greater respect from Libyan rebels who, like Al Qaeda, were persecuted by Gaddafi? Would not the better response to the Libyan uprising have been to sit on the sidelines and do nothing?
Third, the Obama Administration has, for four years, sought greater accommodation of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that at no point in its history has shown itself to be a friend of western values in general or the United States in particular. Knowing the dangers, the United States under Barack Obama was perfectly happy to work with the Muslim Brotherhood. Why was this not foreseeable by President Obama when it was an obviously foreseeable event to so many?
Fourth, why has Barack Obama skipped more than half of his intelligence briefings? The Government Accountability Institute reports the President, since taking office, has attended just 43.8% of his Presidential Daily Briefings. Liberals, to this day, accuse George W. Bush of ignoring terror warnings leading up to 9/11 when he was in office less than 8 months before the attacks. President Obama has not even attended half his daily intelligence briefings in four years. He’s opted for written reports instead of being able to discuss, probe, and question his national security advisors.
Fifth, free speech is an American freedom and one recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It isn’t something our government should be condemning. Why was the American Embassy’s initial reaction to condemn persecuted Coptic Christians for making a movie? We’ve seen this over and over. Draw a cartoon of Mohammad? Riots. Make a movie? Riots. Burn a Koran? Riots. Radical Islamics riot at the slightest provocation. It is what they do. Throwing the First Amendment under the bus does nothing but send a signal that we do not value our most cherished constitutional rights when someone might be offended. Why do that?
Sixth, why did the President condemn Mitt Romney’s own campaign before condemning the violence and bloodshed?
These are difficult days for the United States and for its President. But the events of September 11, 2012, though not foreseeable in the form they took, was foreseeable in that Islamic radicals have been waiting for an opportunity to strike back at the United States and the date is a logical day to foment unrest. Turmoil against the United States’ interests in North Africa and the Middle East after the Arab Spring was predicted by many foreign policy experts. Ambassador Stevens’ death was an avoidable tragedy.
Mitt Romney can and should raise these points. President Obama supported the Arab Spring. He led a coalition into Libya to help Libyan rebels. Now, in the Arab fall, we are seeing the undoing of decades of American foreign policy designed to stabilize, as best we could, an unstable region.”
The events of Monday, more than any scholarly paper, underscore the craven cowardice and geopolitical ineptness of the Obama Administration.
Far from being a surprise, the sacking of two of our embassies and the slaughter of our ambassador in Libya can be rightly described as the logical outcome of the feckless fascination this administration has had with any group of armed thugs who lay claim to being freedom fighters. In short, what happened was a feature of American foreign policy under Obama, not an anomaly.
What Obama has tried to do is create an aura of action and progress by glomming onto breaking events and trying to gain credit from them. There is no rhyme or reason in our foreign policy that cannot be adequately contained in the next State Department press release or by inserting Obama, in Kim Il-Sung fashion, into the lives of previous presidents.
When Barack Obama tacitly consented to the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak many thought this was a good idea. Mubarak, after all, represented the last generation of Arab strong men in the Egyptian tradition. His regime was repressive and the time was deemed right to nudge him out of the way before he could pass on the presidency to his son. Troubling, for a lot of us, was the fact that on one had a clue as to who would take over. But what was known was that the only viable political opposition was the terror connected Muslim Brotherhood — a group that is now feted at the White House.
The same situation applied in Libya. An aging and harmless dictator was ousted after a bloody and protracted civil war. This time the U.S. actively aided the rebels despite numerous press reports that Jihadis were coming home from around the globe to fight for the rebels. Our only stake in that fight that delivered the Libyan government to al-Qaeda and Libyan oil to Russian and France was apparently the thought that offing Qaddafi would be really neat and build Obama’s tough guy standing.
In neither case was the future of the Mediterranean rim a consideration, Obama and his ineptocrats were too busy basking in the soft afterglow of Arab Spring to worry about long term effects.
So today we mourn our dead. We look in shame on our burned embassies. And we remember that the administration that set this deadly sequence of events into motion wants four more years.
If the West loses the cultural war that is underway with various forms of totalitarianism it will not be because of the actions various people in the West who have abolished God and substituted the worship of Tolerance.
I don’t know much about this rube pastor Terry Jones or rogue film maker Sam Bacile, other than they have Islam’s number down pat — or at least Islam as practiced outside its Western enclaves. When a rent-a-mob operating at the behest of the governments of Egypt and Libya (I say operating at the behest, I do so because there is no freedom of assembly in those countries and for a mob to assemble there has to be governmental complicity) stormed our diplomatic facilities there.
In the prelude to the attacks our embassy in Egypt was sending out tweets denouncing Mr. Bacile and his works and even issued an official statement condemning him. Instead of sticking up for American values, like free speech and freedom of religion, our government was attacking a US citizen.
Today a variety of other administration toadies are even advocating that Mr. Jones be prosecuted for exercising his rights under the First Amendment. Cretins like Mike Barnicle who, as might be expected, reside on MSNBC when he said:
“Given this supposed “minister’s” role in last year’s riots in Afghanistan, where people died, and given his apparent or his alleged role in this film, where, not yet nailed down, but at least one American, perhaps the American ambassador is dead, it might be time for the Department of Justice to start viewing his role as an accessory before or after the fact.”
A University of Pennsylvania professor demanded that the film maker Sam Bacile be rounded up when she tweeted:
“Good Morning. How soon is Sam Bacile going to be in jail folks? I need him to go now. When Americans die because you are stupid.”
If you think this is bad how about a high-ranking government official like the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin E. Dempsey calling a citizen and asking them not to do something.
Nobody in the U.S. government, least of all the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff acting in his official capacity, should be calling Terry Jones or any other American citizen about the Mohammed spoof. Not only does that elevate Jones to some sort of semi-official status, but spoofs of deities are entirely within our rights and absolutely no business of the government’s. How about calling Bill Maher and asking him to knock off his anti-Christian remarks.
The U.S. government should not be taking an official position on the Mohammed spoof or any other exercise of free speech. It is entirely outside the official competence of United States military to be calling private citizens asking them be quiet, especially when they are exercising a constitutional right. Offending people is not an incitement to violence. Otherwise I could get everyone who wears a Che Guevara t-shirt brought up on charges of incitement.
Meanwhile, members of Congress should formally protest General Dempsey’s phone call to Terry Jones. I know Petraeus did it when Terry Jones was going to burn some Korans, but he was wrong then and General Dempsey is wrong now. In their private capacity they can make whatever phone calls they want. In their official capacity they have no business making phone calls like this. This is tantamount to the government suppressing our First Amendment rights and is Wilsonian in nature.
Military leaders phoning citizens to ask them to pipe down for the sake of the troops sets a bad precedent. If more copycats do emerge, will Dempsey phone all of them? Will the Pentagon set up a special phone bank for officers to phone critics of Islam and let them know that they’re hurting national security by giving nut cases a pretext to make trouble? If we’re going down this road, let’s just establish a PR bureau inside the Defense Department to issue official statements of patriotic disapproval anytime a U.S. citizen says something that’s unhelpful to the wider strategy in the Middle East
This is shameful. Instead of this being an eye opener into our enemy, our Quislings are frantically searching for ways to placate them.
This is an issue on which all of us should be able to agree. If you believe we live in a liberal, secular society we should be united in our defense of Mr. Jones right to say pretty much whatever he wishes without necessarily agreeing to it. We should condemn the people who use their own religious bigotry to riot and murder. More importantly, if you believe we live in a Western and Christian culture you should be aghast that our government is attacking US citizens for professing their faith.
As I wore yesterday the “film” was not the problem. The Libyan attack was a planned military-like operation to commemorate the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It was also revenge for the drone strike in Yemen killing Saeed al-Shihri, al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader. The film was merely an excuse for the riots in Cairo. So let’s move away from this film business and focus on the real issue — Radical Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood. “Americans have watches, but we have time.”
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