by George Landrith
Obama is in trouble in the polls. His veneer of invincibility is gone. Team Obama spent $150 million over the past five months to make Romney appear unacceptable. In 90 minutes, Romney went straight to the American public and proved all those slick ads wrong. Now Obama’s allies in the media are despondent.
The next presidential debate will focus on foreign policy. Only a month ago, that would have been welcome news to the Obama campaign. Foreign policy was his strength – at least that is what they said at the convention in Charlotte.
But now there are serious allegations of a cover-up surrounding the security debacle in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in the destruction of the American consulate and the tragic assassination of four American diplomats.
For weeks after the attack, the Obama administration and President Obama himself claimed that it was a spontaneous attack by an angry mob motivated by an obscure and offensive YouTube video.
But it is now clear that almost immediately after the attack, the White House knew that the talking points it would relentlessly push for the next several weeks were entirely false.
The truth is anyone with even a modicum of common sense knew that an attack on the anniversary of 9/11 was not spontaneous and that a movie that has been posted at YouTube for roughly six months didn’t magically hit a boiling point on 9/11. It was a mindlessly silly narrative from the start.
Despite knowing the truth, the White House used its taxpayer funded communications apparatus to lie to the American public, hide the president’s embarrassing foreign policy failures, and cast the attack as completely unforeseeable, entirely spontaneous, and the result of an obscure and offensive YouTube video.
None of that was true and Obama and the White House knew it. It was a fabrication designed to protect the president from being held accountable for a weak and feckless foreign policy that resulted in the death of four Americans.
There are times when presidents cannot tell all that they know. Obviously, no American could seriously criticize President Franklin D. Roosevelt if he had denied any plan to invade Normandy on the eve of the attack. But this is not that case. If you’re going to tell a lie to the public to protect some larger national security issue, shouldn’t it be at least a plausible lie and shouldn’t it be to protect battle plans and save lives? In this case the White House’s lies did not protect American battle plans or American lives. The only thing they were protecting was Obama’s vanity and his political career.
First, the attacks were entirely foreseeable – even for a president that skips almost 60% of his national security briefings. It was the eleventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Each and every anniversary of September 11th, millions of Americans wonder if there will be new attacks and hope and pray that we are prepared. Apparently, no one in the White House had those concerns.
Perhaps team Obama was blind to the risks because Obama believes that his mere inauguration would ease tensions in the Middle East. That is a profoundly naive and self-absorbed view. After almost four years of Obama, are tensions easing anywhere? The Middle East is in flames.
But regardless of how silly it is and was, Obama really believed his persona would all by itself reduce tensions. As a result, he was caught unprepared because he failed to grasp the risk. Apparently, he is so doctrinaire that facts which disprove his uninformed and callow world view are ignored or not noticed.
Second, the attacks were well coordinated and highly planned by al Qaeda terrorists. Benghazi is a well known hot bed of terrorist activity. The attacks on the American consulate involved two separate synchronized attacks on two locations and used large weapons fire, mortars, rocket propelled grenades, and automatic weapons — not the typical fare at a spontaneous protest, even in the Middle East.
Libyan governmental and military officials and numerous media reports reveal that Libyan security officials gave three days advance warning to the US of the risks of attack. It just so happens that Obama skipped security briefings on each of those days. There had also been bombing attempts in the months leading up to the attacks. The President of Libya has stated unequivocally that it was a terrorist attack and that no movie anywhere had anything to do with it.
With this backdrop of publicly available information, Obama continued the same tired narrative before the United Nations where he devoted far too much of his time denouncing the YouTube video and apologizing for insulting Islam. He continued with his entirely implausible and completely false narrative that the attack was simply a mob protest that got terribly out of hand and which was motivated by an insulting YouTube video. Obama spent more time denouncing the video than he did the assassination of four American diplomats and his most strident criticisms were reserved for the movie, not the slayings.
After Obama’s weak UN performance, the Egyptian President, Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, countered that freedom of speech “comes with serious implications for international peace and stability.” This is the problem with apologizing for offensive videos — the Muslim Brotherhood thinks they can lecture you on how you should be more responsible in your speech. It doesn’t occur them that they should be more responsible in their murderous actions.
It never really occurred to our president to lecture the troglodytes of the world on the need to not kill diplomats — something that has been a bedrock of the civilized world since at least 500 B.C. Even Genghis Khan, a conquering military leader to some, and war lord to others, was known for protecting the rights of diplomats. In fact, he would destroy an entire empire in retaliation for the execution or even the mistreatment of his ambassadors.
If Genghis Khan understands it is not acceptable to kill diplomats, why can’t the terrorists? Instead, of focusing on this point, Obama focused on the offensive video and told us, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” Here’s an idea – how about a speech focused on how the future must not belong to Neanderthals who kill diplomats or commit terror?
But Obama had skillfully given America a deceptive head fake and perpetuated the story he hoped would take hold. But the falsehoods did not stop there. Team Obama used its minions in the media to blame the slain ambassador saying that he didn’t understand or appreciate the risks and wanted to be close to the people so he had not wanted security protection. Aside from being a complete lie, it is shameful that they would try to blame the slain ambassador.
We now know that Ambassador Chris Stevens was well aware of the risks. In fact, he asked for more security and for improvements to the consulate so that it would be a “harder” target. It turns out that the Obama Administration denied those requests.
It is now clear why team Obama has been covering up the truth about the terrorist attack in Benghazi. Obama hopes to avoid accountability by casting it as a completely unforeseeable and random act. Anything to avoid it being identified as the result of his failed policies.
Failing to be prepared on the anniversary of 9/11 – particularly in a town known as a hotbed for al Qaeda activities – is strong evidence of incompetence. But the cover-up that followed is conclusive proof of basic dishonesty and corruption.
To those who would prefer to ignore the evidence and maintain the idyllic view that while wrong on the facts, Obama acted in good faith, one must remember that within less than 24 hours of the attack, the White House knew virtually everything that Obama and his minions said for the next two or three weeks was completely false.
The cover-up is always worse than the thing being covered up. The truth is, no president will get everything right. Even the best ones make a mistakes. But the best ones admit their mistakes, accept responsibility and learn from their mistakes. Obama does none of that. He simply denies he made any mistakes and lies about the circumstances, and blames others. The coverup reveals something far worse than incompetence. It lays bare a corrupt man who hopes to deceive the public and escape accountability in a cynical attempt to cling to power. Isn’t that what the phrase “Chicago-style politician” means?