Spinning The Middle East & The Murder Of An Ambassador

In 2007, Obama claimed that, if he was elected, Muslim hostility would ease. As the events of the past week have brought home, we are, today, in worse shape in the Middle East than we were four years ago - and indeed, than we were on 9-11-01 - with radical Salafists now in or near control in most Arab countries.

That is a reality that puts a stake in the heart of Obama's narrative that he has been a foreign policy success. To obfuscate, the administration on Sunday trotted out UN Ambassador Susan Rice to make the case that the 9-11-12 violence in Cairo and the murder of our Ambassador in Benghazi were nothing more than a spontaneous response - on 9-11 no less - to an anti Muslim film trailer that, incidentally, had been on the internet for months. As Conn Carol writes {h/t Instapundit):

[N]o one outside the White House believes a single video caused the violence. Liberal commentator and Tufts University international politics professor Dan Drezner has called Obama’s decision to blame the YouTube clip a “radically incomplete and dishonest answer.” As The New York Times Ross Douthat points out, the riots have far more to do with internal power politics.

And Rep. Alen West minced no words in responding to Rice's contentions:



(H/T Bluegrass Pundit)

As Charles Krauthammer pointed out a few days ago, what is happening is that the Obama administration is agreeing with the rioters, throwing our First Amendment under the bus rather than admit that the administration's Middle East policies of apology by the U.S., justification of Arab victimhood, and disengagement have borne a poisonous fruit.



Other pundits have reached similar conclusions, each worth a read. The best analysis comes from Victor Davis Hanson at PJM

:

The worst response to radical Islam has unfortunately become the present administration’s postmodern, so-cool policy. The Cairo fable, the al Arabiya “Bush did it” interview, the euphemisms (e.g., “man-caused disasters”), the insanity that Maj. Hasan’s murdering threatens our diversity programs, trying KSM in New York, reading Mutallab his Miranda rights, serial trashing of Guantanamo, James Clapper’s laughable assurance that the Muslim Brotherhood is “secular,” NASA’s all-important Muslim outreach, etc., at best remind the Islamists that Westerners would hardly be so self-abasing if there were not something to be ashamed about.

Barry Rubin, also writing at PJM, notes that the "causes of these demonstrations are not some act of Islamophobia, but the agitation of revolutionary Islamist groups that work systematically every day to build anti-Americanism, hatred of the West, and the loathing of Jews and Christians." That is also the conclusion Fouad Ajami, writing at the Washington Post.

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Update: Prof. Niall Ferguson also has an excellent article on the situation in the Middle East today, opining that "what is unfolding in the Middle East has the makings of the most perfect storm in American foreign policy since 1979."

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But deflecting attention from reality of the Middle East exposed by the 9-11-12 violence has not been the only rear guard action the Obama administration has been engaging in this past week. There is also the attempt to wholly gloss over the scandalous lack of security in Benghazi on 9-11-12 that led directly to the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

To this end, the State Dept. is stonewalling, outrageously refusing to answer any more questions on the murders in Benghazi. Further the administration used Ambassador Susan Rice's appearance on on all of the Sunday talk shows to provide a complete defense of the administration. Rice insisted that security in Benghazi, which, on 9-11-12 consisted of a locked door and two American and four Libyan security personnel, was "strong" and "significant." This despite the fact that "terror cells in Benghazi had carried out five attacks since April, including one at the same consulate, a bombing at the same consulate in June." And despite the fact there was forewarning of the attack. And despite the fact that 9-11 is a date even an idiot knows is a very likely to be a day of violence directed at U.S. targets by Osama-loving Salafis.

Rice is lying shamelessly. The security plan in Benghazi was not "significant" or "strong," it was criminally reckless. Now, hold your breath until the MSM holds the Obama administration to account for this any time before Nov. 7.

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