OPINION:
With the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, under siege, the White House rushed out a television ad denouncing the anti-Islamic video the Obama administration claims is at the root of the crisis. Like previous attempts to empathize with Muslim radicals, this enabling will just make things worse.
The State Department video shows President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton each voicing their disgust at the low-budget film, “Innocence of Muslims.” The White House has an interest in hyping the clip as the cause of recent violence to dodge responsibility for Mideast chaos. White House spokesman Jay Carney argued the protests weren’t directly aimed at the United States even as mobs chanted “Death to America” and burned Mr. Obama in effigy.
The administration’s narrative about the movie being the sole cause of “spontaneous” uprisings starting on Sept. 11 has fallen apart. It since has been revealed that local intelligence officials warned attacks were planned for the Sept. 11 anniversary. In Senate testimony on Wednesday, National Counterterrorism Center director Matthew Olsen called the incident in Benghazi that took the lives of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others a “terrorist attack,” rather than a mob uprising. The operation has been tied to al Qaeda operative Sufyan Ben Qumu, a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, whom the Obama administration previously described as an “ally of sorts.” The revolt in Cairo was also pre-planned and announced days in advance on “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman’s official website. It was billed as a solidarity rally for the imprisoned terrorist mastermind; there was no mention of the scapegoat film.
Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton have gone overboard denouncing the low-budget, farcical film, using language that would best be reserved for truly disgusting and repellent images such as hostage beheadings and the horrific results of terrorist attacks. They have even weighed in on the allegedly anti-Muhammad cartoons printed this week in a French magazine which have no ties to the United States.
The Democrats’ sensitivities don’t extend to the Judeo-Christian flock. During the Sept. 11 protest in Cairo, a Muslim cleric named Ahmed Abdullah (aka Abu Islam) was caught on tape desecrating a Bible. “I tore it apart and threw it to the demonstrators to step on it with their shoes,” he explained. “Next time I will make my grandson urinate on it.” The White House reserved comment. Closer to home on Sept. 14 at the Western North Carolina State Fair, a Muslim working a Democratic Party booth tore up a Bible and threw it in a trash can. Outraged onlookers confronted the ranting man, who was led away by security guards. Otherwise, as one attendee made clear, “the good ole boys would have beaten the hell out of him” — at which point the Obama administration would have apologized to the Muslim world and opened a hate-crime investigation.
The White House consistently expresses understanding and sympathy with the faux outrage of the mobs in the street whose religious beliefs are often indistinguishable from those of al Qaeda. Each time the administration does this, violence spreads. Unfortunately for Barack, a soon-to-be-released self-glorifying feature film about the bin Laden takedown won’t improve Mr. Obama’s image in the Muslim world. Look for those riots in December.
The Washington Times
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