Photo across the front page of the very left Huffington Post under a big red headline “Planned Attack?”
As the crisis in Egypt and Libya was still emerging yesterday (on 9/11), apparently caused in response to an internet movie that ‘insulted’ Islam [there is now confusion about this; the 'movie' may be a fake and falsely attributed to an "Israeli Jew"] the US Egypt embassy released a statement:
“The embassy of the US Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”
The Embassy then followed up with Tweets condemning the violence but reiterating their statement about religious sympathy. This was humiliating and (as it transpired, tragically ineffective). Gov. Romney condemned this in no uncertain terms and said Obama is sending mixed messages when he should have stood unequivocally behind American sovereign soil in Egypt and Libya.
“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi…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.”
President Obama said he did not authorize the US embassy statement, and criticized Romney for politicizing the crisis. This makes the White House look flakey (not taking responsibility). There are a number of other issues at stake here for Obama.
Firstly, this is a crisis (potentially a big one) and Romney has every right to bring his President to task over perhaps his most important function: Commander in Chief. Having made so much play over killing Osama bin Laden amid growing disquiet among the Seals and US military towards Obama’s handling of that event, his political management of the emerging Libyan/Egypt crisis is now a high stakes game. Having “lived by the sword,” he may now “die by the sword” (politically and diplomatically). You cannot claim macho over bin Laden victories won by others but equivocate over this crisis being directly managed by your own government (embassies). Obama made foreign affairs his strongest suit, and his previous action in Libya helped firm that.
Secondly, Intelligence sources are now confirming that the killings in Libya are unrelated to the so-called movie protests, but were planned murders of Americans. This makes the US embassy statement misplaced, naive, and uninformed. It damages the political street cred. of the White House. The statement assumes that America is at fault over ‘Muslim sensibilities’ when it can be seen – as in the case of the Denmark cartoons – as complete intolerance of anything that critiques or questions Islam. We do this constantly in the West of Christianity, or anything else including politics and our leaders. Obama should be championing that and encouraging Muslims to accept that liberating culture. He is the world champion of democracy, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, not an apologist for statements that others might not like. The conciliatory tone of the Obama White House appears to woefully misunderstand the Islamic political forces building against America.
The Cairo embassy statement is indicative of the politically correct ideology so indicative of the Obama regime. Americans are starting to feel concern about the vacuousness of Obama’s grasp on foreign affairs, now that warships are approaching the North African coastline.
Romney looks stronger and clearer, unequivocally defending American values and sovereignty while Obama seems to be sending mixed messages.
This growing crisis comes on the tail of yesterday’s diplomatic stumble with Israel and its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Iran and the real threat to world peace. The White House has said there was no request for a meeting. The Israelis say, publicly, and at the highest level, there was and that they were turned down. Who is right? This undermines the integrity of the White House and looks unprofessional.
These developments also come on the tail of the stumble at the DNC last week over Jerusalem and God and leaves Q. in the mind of Americans about where Obama’s real loyalties lay. Is he really the world Commander in Chief of Western faith and values? or an apologist for militant and intolerant Islam?
All this exposes an uncertain White House. In a growing crisis, Americans want a strong leader, and so far, Obama does not seem certain, or that his regime has a grasp on events beyond their tidy utopian ideology of how the world should be.
Because of how this is being handled, I feel Obama has now lost the election. Appropriately (and somehat prophetically) Bob Dyan released his new album (on 9/11) yesterday -Tempest. Obama is certainly caught in this twister.
It’s certainly not going to help Obama.
The way that the media has piled on Romney isn’t going to hurt him so much as it’s going to further reinforce the perception that the media will find any excuse to criticise Republicians while excusing Democrats.
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“Because of how this is being handled, I feel Obama has now lost the election.”
Oh dear, oh dear. Well we’ll just see now won’t we? I think you’ll find most Americans aren’t quite as hysterical as you and that Romney’s unwise and unpatriotic politicisation of this event will damage him badly.