by Fred J. Eckert
As radical Islamist thugs stormed the US Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, and ripped to pieces then burned the American flag, the Obama-led US government swiftly responded with a negative movie review.
"The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims," America told the world.
Some Muslims had had their feelings hurt by a poorly done and little-viewed film that ridicules Islam. Good grief! Lots of Muslims ridicule Christians and Jews all the time and many of them take great delight in hurting our feelings by specializing in murdering and maiming Christians and Jews.
Who hurt their feelings this time? Some man not connected with our Cairo embassy or the US government who is not even a US citizen. Yet many, possibly most, Muslims believe this justifies an act of war against the United States, which is what an attack against an embassy or consulate is -- and the Obama-led US government believes that a fitting response to the threat of mayhem and murder is to assure its perpetrators that we feel their pain.
This sorry spectacle raises that great question that Bubba's mother put to Forest in the movie Forest Gump -- "Are you crazy or just plain stupid?" -- about both those Muslims who think and act in such a manner and those in the US government who feel their pain
Crazy and stupid is what the Obama Administration's foreign policy approach in that region of the world has been.
In Egypt and Libya, US policy under Obama was to pave the way for taking control from dictators who posed no threat to the United States and indeed were impeding the spread of radical Islam and replacing them with leaders highly likely to be aggressively hostile toward us. Perhaps it's not such a good idea for a president to skip six out of ten of his intelligence briefings.
In Iran and Syria US policy under Obama assiduously has been to avoid doing anything effective to strip control from viciously anti-American dictatorships and help pave the way for pro-American regimes to come to power.
What the Obama Administration and its cheerleaders in the media applauded as "leading from behind" really means doing things bass-ackwards.
But don't wait for the media to remind the American people that Egypt, where our embassy was overrun and our flag supplanted with a black al-Qaeda banner, and Libya, where also on the anniversary of 9/11 the US Consulate in Benghazi was overrun and fire bombed with our US Ambassador and three other US diplomats murdered, have for some time now been touted by the Obama camp and the mainstream media as stellar examples of Obama foreign policy "successes."
Don't hold your breath waiting for them to ask Barack Obama if he still thinks he was right on Egypt and Libya and still thinks he's right to undercut the possibility of pro-American regime change in Iran and Syria.
Interesting, isn't it, that instead of asking such obvious questions of Obama and his apologists, the reaction of the mainstream media was to gang up on Mitt Romney for daring to say, as any sensible American would, that when we are under attack it is foolish to express sympathy for our attackers, even if they claim someone has hurt their feelings. The media's take was that it was totally inappropriate for Romney to publicly criticize any statement by anyone in the US government regarding handling of a crisis, a thought that never occurred to them when candidate John Kerry constantly did so during his campaign against President George W. Bush. Talk about crazy and stupid - check it out.
Interesting, too, isn't it, that while Cairo is the place where Obama delivered a speech the media billed as some sort of new beginning in US-Muslim World relations, a speech they gushed over -- "Obama's standing above the country, above-above the world; he's sort of God; he's the teacher." -- Newsweek editor Evan Thomas -- it has yet to occur to a single one of them to ask Obama or his Press Secretary or any of his surrogates certain questions that just leap out from that speech as a gift to any good journalist.
Such as:
"Mr. President, in light of what we have just witnessed in Egypt and Libya, do you still stand by your statement in your June, 2009, Cairo speech that 'Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance'"?
"You weren't asked back then, but could you give us some specific examples of the words and deeds by which Islam has demonstrated its religious tolerance"?
"You also said in your Cairo speech, 'I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.' Do you think the events in Egypt and Libra on the anniversary of 9/11 might indicate that Muslims are not appreciative of your efforts on their behalf? You have never said that you also consider it a responsibility of the President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Christianity and Judaism - why not?"
"Is it possible that the sort of things these Muslim goons did in Cairo and Benghazi might contribute to what you call negative stereotypes about Islam?"
Another question that comes to mind: "In your acceptance speech you mocked Governor Romney as being 'new' to foreign policy. In light of what appear to be serious foreign policy failures in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Iran under your watch, do you stand by the assertion you made during the 2008 campaign that your having lived in Indonesia between the ages of six and ten should count for foreign policy experience?"
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.
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment