There’s plenty to get up to date on. Campaign
trivia is all the rage, mostly because trivia is what campaign
correspondents understand best, but there’s real news out there. We’re
seeing the daily grim result of Mr. Obama’s apologetic outreach to the
Muslims.
The American embassy in Pakistan battens down under siege. The prime
minister of Iraq, thought to be an American ally, beats the dead horse
on which the infamous video rides. Protests and demonstrations shut down
a U.S. consulate in Indonesia. Crowds in Afghanistan chant death for
America (when they aren’t killing American soldiers.)
But serenity is the rule in Washington. The president prefers life in
his bubble, where he can survey the world as he imagines it is, eager
to hear another speech, rather than the world as it really is, full of
bad people on their way to the mosque and keen to kill, maim and
dismember Americans to please Allah. If only Israel would behave and the
First Amendment disappear. Peace and love would envelop us all.
Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, and Jay Carney, the
presidential mouthpiece, gave him – and the rest of the world – a lot
of misinformation (and maybe even disinformation) about the assault on
the Benghazi consulate, and now they have to admit that everything they
said was wrong.
They shamelessly peddled the pernicious nonsense that the assault was
a spontaneous fit of anger, maybe even righteous anger, by Islamic
zealots upset by a home-made video. The White House hooted at the idea
that the assault was “pre-planned,” even when the president of Libya
said everything he knew about the attack told him it was planned.
Ignorance about weapons is highly prized at this White House, and
neither Miss Rice nor Mr. Carney know the difference between a BB gun
and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Otherwise they would understand
that heavy weapons do not spontaneously appear on the streets, not even
in places where the mobs are inspired by the religion of peace.
The White House lie was swallowed whole by the compliant media, but
eventually the facts grew legs and a voice, however reluctant and timid.
Mr. Obama’s government at last has to acknowledge what everybody else
could readily see, that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was “a
terrorist attack.” Four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens,
died at the hands of terrorists.
“I would say yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist
attack on our [consulate],” Matt Olsen, director of the National
Counterterrorism Center, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee
under sharp questioning by Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. But the
reluctant spook wouldn’t quite surrender the whole White House lie that
the attack was spontaneous, and not “pre-planned.”
The ambassador, it now turns out, was worried about security at the
embassy in Tripoli and the consulate in Benghazi, and his personal
safety as well. The Libyan government said it warned the American three
days before the planned and co-ordinated assault in Benghazi, but nobody
was listening. The word never got inside the bubble.
The president had his usual media help in spinning the news, and Mitt
Romney’s criticism of the president for being asleep at the switch was
widely described as a “gaffe.” But now it’s clear that Mr. Romney was
right and the Gaffe Patrol was shooting blanks. Polls show that approval
of the president’s handling of foreign policies – such as knowing what
to do when an enemy strikes – is down 5 points. Worse, after all the
huffing and puffing about Romney “gaffes” about Libya and his remarks
about “the dependency society,” who pays taxes and who doesn’t, Gallup’s
daily tracking poll put the race Thursday as dead even again, 47 points
for the president, 47 points for the challenger.
It gets worse. A new poll taken for the American Jewish Committee
says the president’s support among Jews in Florida is down 7 percentage
points from 2008. This represents 50,000 Jewish voters, more than enough
to tip the result to the Republicans in a race as tight as the 2012
race appears to be.
The news is enough to make a president put his iPad away and go to
sleep, and be grateful for the security of his bubble, and dream dreamy
dreams of Susan Rice and Jay Carney and their tales of the Arabian
slights.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment