US ELECTIONS: OBAMA’S BENGHAZI BUNGLING, THE BROTHERHOOD, THE JEWISH VOTE & FOREIGN POLICY

OBAMA, THE BROTHERHOOD, AND THE JEWISH LEFT
Mike Lumish

Times of Israel, October 15, 2012

Is the American Jewish left suffering from cognitive dissonance?

The Muslim Brotherhood is the foremost anti-Semitic organization in the world today. During the Morsi campaign they called for the conquest of Jerusalem. During World War II they supported the Nazis. Sayyid Qutb, one of their founding figures, wrote a pamphlet entitled “Our Struggle with the Jews.” They believe in an international caliphate in which sharia would reign throughout the world, thus making Jews, and other dhimmis, second- and third-class citizens; women the property of men; and gay people, quite frankly, dead….

Barack Obama supports the Muslim Brotherhood and progressive-left American Jews support Obama; thus those Jews, whether they will admit it to themselves or not, and however they might otherwise justify it, support the Muslim Brotherhood. I find this situation to be absolutely unfathomable. How is it possible that after so many centuries of abuse throughout Europe and after 1,400 years of unjust violence and oppression against us in the Muslim Middle East, American Jews could possibly support an American president who helped usher the Muslim Brotherhood into power in Egypt? How is this possible?…

Denial plays a big role in this phenomenon, because if you were to ask your average American Jewish supporter of Barack Obama just why they are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood they probably would not know what the heck you were talking about. When explained to them that the Muslim Brotherhood is not only anti-Semitic, but even genocidal toward Jews, and that Barack Obama has supported their rise throughout the Muslim Middle East, particularly in Egypt, they would probably look at you as if you yammering at them in Swahili.

It’s pure denial. It is a wilful turning away from very serious facts and a deadly serious situation for the Jews in Israel.  And if you do not think that Obama has actively supported the Muslim Brotherhood, how do you explain the fact that administration officials met with the Brotherhood on several occasions before they came into power in Egypt? How do you explain the fact that, over Mubarak’s objections, Obama invited the Brotherhood to his Cairo speech of 2009? How do you explain the fact that when Obama called for the deposing of Mubarak he knew that the Brotherhood would likely fill the power vacuum? How do you explain the fact that Hillary Clinton flew to Egypt to ensure the transition from military control of the country to Brotherhood control? However one slices and dices these facts, it is simply undeniable that Obama promoted the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East.

…[A]nother way in which “progressive” Jews justify their support for Obama, despite his support for the Muslim Brotherhood [is]: democracy. That’s right: The Muslim Brotherhood is misogynistic,  homophobic, anti-Semitic, and anti-democratic, yet we must support Obama’s efforts to bolster the Brotherhood out of support for democracy! After all, democracy can be a messy business, so who are we to deny the legitimate national aspirations of the Egyptian people? Sure, those national aspirations may include the conquest of Jerusalem and the genocide of the Jews but, hey, that’s democracy….

They seem to think that supporting democracy is some sort of suicide pact, and that we are obligated to honor any choices made by any people anywhere so long as those choices are expressed via the voting booth. Well, excuse me, but didn’t a particularly nasty individual rise to power in Germany during the 1930s via democratic means? I think he did.

We should support democracy, but we are also allowed to take sides — and we are under no obligation to support any political party, much less the foremost anti-Semitic political party on the planet. What I think is that American Jews are making a truly awful mistake in supporting this presidency. I voted for the guy in 2008, but I also watched and learned. The main thing that I learned was that I was dead wrong to support Obama to begin with. No Jewish person should support a politician who supports the Brotherhood.

Progressive-left American Jews are holding two contradictory notions in their minds. They, for the most part, support the State of Israel, but they also support president Obama. Obama supports the Brotherhood and the Brotherhood tells us that they want to conquer Jerusalem. Is this not cognitive dissonance? (Top of Page)

THE MURDERS IN LIBYA, THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE, AND
THE PATTERN OF OBAMA FOREIGN POLICY

Barry Rubin

Jewish Press, October 17, 2012

While foreign policy did not figure large in the second presidential debate, the Middle East again emerged as the overwhelmingly main international issue….

…[T]he main emphasis in the debate was on the Benghazi assassinations. Obama said:

 “So as soon as we found out that the Benghazi consulate was being overrun, I was on the phone with my national security team, and I gave them three instructions. Number one, beef up our security and — and — and procedures not just in Libya but every embassy and consulate in the region. Number two, investigate exactly what happened, regardless of where the facts lead us, to make sure that folks are held accountable and it doesn’t happen again. And number three, we are going to find out who did this, and we are going to hunt them down, because one of the things that I’ve said throughout my presidency is when folks mess with Americans, we go after them.”

In other words, Obama said let’s increase security—after the attack was made—and then investigate and find those responsible for the attack. This is all rather obvious and anyone would have done that. But the real questions are different ones: How about investigating why there was such a security breach and the reasons for the attack?

And how about what happened beforehand?  The official story of what led up to the attack is just plain weird. Supposedly, the U.S. ambassador arrived back in the country and immediately ran off to Benghazi virtually by himself allegedly to investigate building a new school and a hospital there yet without any real security. His protection was to be provided by relatively untrained Libyans who a few months earlier had been rebels in the civil war.

It is quite true that the State Department and ultimately Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was responsible for the ambassador being in Benghazi and for ensuring his protection. The president would not be consulted on such a “minor” event. But the story hinges on why the ambassador was in Benghazi that day.

If he was, as accounts by sources in the U.S. intelligence community suggested, negotiating with a terrorist, anti-American group to obtain the return of U.S. weapons provided during the civil war that would have been a much higher-priority matter. The fact that he was not accompanied by a delegation of foreign aid experts to evaluate these alleged projects shows that the reason for the ambassador’s presence in Benghazi is being covered up. This situation transcends State Department jurisdiction and brings in the CIA and higher-level national security officials. The plan would have been in the presidential briefing and it is quite conceivable he would have been called on to approve of it.

Obama said he did three things but in fact he did four: he and his administration immediately lied to the American people about the cause of the attack, what happened, and who appeared to have done it.

1. They said the attack was due to the video rather than a revolutionary Islamist attempt to hit at the United States and subvert the regime in Libya.

2. They said the attack was a spontaneous act in the context of a peaceful demonstration when it was a planned assault.

3. They said that there was no idea who was responsible when it was almost certainly al-Qaida.

In the debate, Obama charged:

While we were still dealing with our diplomats being threatened, Governor Romney put out a press release trying to make political points. And that’s not how a commander in chief operates. You don’t turn national security into a political issue, certainly not right when it’s happening.

Yet all three of the above lies were precisely a matter of turning “national security into a political issue,” and that is what Obama has done throughout his term. To acknowledge the cause of the attack would have been to acknowledge the real threat in the Middle East and the embarrassing fact that American weapons had been given to terrorist, anti-American groups….

To acknowledge the nature of the attack would be to show the depth of the security failure—on September 11 of all days—in not recognizing the danger in Benghazi. This includes the fact that the guards were untrained; that they had—according to one of them—been aware of the danger and not told any Americans; that they had fled; that Libyan regime sources had apparently tipped off the attackers to where Americans were hiding; and that there had been no U.S.-provided security….

In addition, attributing the event to a video produced in the United States—a clear and obvious lie—put a large part of the blame on America itself. No, huge forces aren’t seeking to create radical Islamist regimes in every country in the Middle East, there are just folks offended by a slur on their religion.

To admit that al-Qaida is still very much in business would show that Obama’s claim the group had been defeated was false and demonstrate the limited value of killing Usama bin Ladin. Al-Qaida is, of course, still strong in Yemen and Somalia as well as having active groups in the Gaza Strip, Iraq, Syria, and other places.

Obama continues in the debate:

But when it comes to our national security, I mean what I say. I said I’d end the war in Libya — in Iraq, and I did. I said that we’d go after al-Qaida and bin Laden. We have. I said we’d transition out of Afghanistan and start making sure that Afghans are responsible for their own security. That’s what I’m doing.

What Obama should have said is that he would end U.S. combat presence in these countries. Yet the wars continue. The assassination of the U.S. ambassador to Libya was an event in that war.  And contrary to Clinton’s statement, Obama affirmed: “…I am ultimately responsible for what’s taking place [in Libya]….”

But what is taking place? The debate ultimately focused on the rather narrow question of whether Obama had or had not immediately called the assassination a “terrorist attack.” This is a red herring. Inasmuch as Americans were murdered for non-criminal reasons, the attack was by definition terrorist. …

The real questions, however, were raised by Romney in his response:

There were other issues associated with this—with this tragedy. There were many days that passed before we knew whether this was a spontaneous demonstration or actually whether it was a terrorist attack. And there was no demonstration involved. It was a terrorist attack, and it took a long time for that to be told to the American people. Whether there was some misleading or instead whether we just didn’t know what happened, I think you have to ask yourself why didn’t we know five days later when the ambassador to the United Nations [Susan Rice, acting of course on administration directives] went on TV to say that this was a demonstration. How could of we not known?

In other words, the Obama Administration deliberately lied to the American people.

But I find more troubling than this that on…[the] day following the assassination of the United States ambassador — the first time that’s happened since 1979 — when we have four Americans killed there, when apparently we didn’t know what happened, that the president the day after that happened flies to Las Vegas for a political fundraiser, then the next day to Colorado for another event, another political event.

In this regard, Obama didn’t so much “make political points” or “turn national security into a political issue,” he simply put his own political benefit ahead of national security. Since according to his own claim, Obama didn’t know what happened and there was a wave of other attacks developing, he should have put the priority on dealing with a crisis.  And as for the way Obama behaved, to quote his own words, “that’s not how a commander in chief operates.” That is why this specific issue is so emblematic of Obama’s foreign policy performance.

Romney continued:

This calls into question the president’s whole policy in the Middle East. Look what’s happening in Syria, in Egypt, now in Libya. Consider the distance between ourselves and Israel, where the president said that…he was going to put daylight between us and Israel. We have Iran four years closer to a nuclear bomb. Syria—Syria’s not just the tragedy of 30,000 civilians being killed by a military, but also a…strategically significant player for America. The president’s policies throughout the Middle East began with an apology tour and pursue a strategy of leading from behind, and this strategy is unraveling before our very eyes.

Quite true. The assassinations in Libya and how Obama handled them are one more example of that pattern. A region involving hundreds of millions of people and the main international source for American energy is going down the drain and Obama is, figuratively, heading off for Las Vegas.  (Top of Page)

OBAMA'S BACKTRACKING ON THE BENGHAZI

TERROR ATTACK DECEIVES ONLY HIMSELF

John Bolton

The Guardian, October 17, 2012

Given the importance of American national security, it was discouraging that the issue did not come up in 2012's "town hall" presidential debate until the last 30 minutes. Fortunately, however, when moderator Candy Crowley finally got around to it, the undecided voter's question was very specific, and quite likely on the minds of many other US citizens. Referring to Washington's denials of requests for additional security from our embassy in Libya, the questioner asked:

"Who was it that denied enhanced security and why?"

Short and to the point. And Barack Obama did not answer it.  Instead, following his administration's game plan on virtually every issue, Obama attacked Mitt Romney for allegedly politicizing the Benghazi attack. Romney responded by correctly noting that Obama and his surrogates had spent weeks erroneously blaming the assassination of four Americans on spontaneous demonstrators protesting the now-infamous Innocence of Muslims video trailer, rather than on a pre-planned terrorist attack.

Here, it gets interesting. Obama argued, as his surrogates had several weeks ago, that he had described the 11 September attack as terrorism the day afterward. Crowley came to his defense. But Obama's explanation is nothing but post-facto rationalization, and Crowley is simply, and embarrassingly, uninformed. Her intervention, which she effectively admitted after the debate was wrong, was as offensive for its error on the facts as it was for its partisanship.

We are not simply parsing words. What Obama said on 12 September, and what he and his aides said in the weeks after, tell volumes about his ideology and worldview, and why his foreign policy is in a state of collapse. On 12 September, Obama described the tragedy in Benghazi, placing it in the context of our painful remembrance of the first 11 September attacks. He spoke evocatively of walking through Arlington Cemetery on 11 September, honoring those who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only then did Obama say:
 

"No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation …"

Obviously, Obama was sweeping widely disparate acts of American courage and character on distant battlefields together in a message of determination, and well said it was. But it was by no means a declaration that the Benghazi attacks were undertaken by terrorists. Quite the contrary. Just a few paragraphs before, Obama had adumbrated the Muhammad video explanation, saying:

"Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification for this type of senseless violence."

Romney's central point remains critical and unanswered by Obama. The real issue is why the administration persisted for weeks in its interpretation that a spontaneous demonstration over the Muhammad video had gotten out of hand…..

On 12 September, the State Department's under-secretary for management, briefing congressional staffers, told them it was a terrorist attack. And a senior administration counter-terrorism official, testifying before Congress just a week after the attack, characterized it as terrorism. And yet, the president spoke before the world at the United Nations thereafter, still linking the assassinations of four Americans to the video.

Some characterize Obama's line of argument as a cover-up, an accusation the president theatrically denied during the town hall debate. Wilful and repeated misrepresentation is certainly consistent with a cover-up, but it is also consistent with a presidential ideology that is so powerful and pervasive that facts and reality that don't conform to the worldview derived from the ideology are simply rejected….

The Obama storyline is that the "war on terror" is over, al-Qaida has been defeated, and Gaddafi's overthrow and the Arab Spring are bringing democracy to Libya. This worldview is also, coincidentally of course, very helpful to the president politically. In fact, however, the reality is quite different from Obama's ideology on all three of these points, as tragically demonstrated in Benghazi on 11 September, notwithstanding the president's stubborn unwillingness to acknowledge it.

Thus, Tuesday's debate hardly constitutes a rejection of the Romney assessment, which is solidly grounded in facts, and is being constantly reinforced as new facts come to light…The citizen questioner in Long Island has a question that remains unanswered, and there are many more like it. And there are still three weeks until the election. (Top of Page)

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Obama, Romney and the Jews : Ruth R. Wisse, Wall Street Journal, October 16, 2012

Voters will not necessarily have Israel in mind—but for those who do, the choice has never seemed clearer. No citizens would seem to need a strong America more than the Jews, who are once again targeted by aggressors seeking to destroy what they cannot attain.

Why Mitt? : Gabriel Schoenfeld, Jerusalem Post, October 17, 2012

My support for Mitt Romney has something to do with a ship called the Serpa Pinto and with an American Marxist revolutionary. For some time now some liberal friends, and even my own daughters, have been pestering me with the same question. Why, they ask, are you supporting Mitt Romney?

No Big Changes Expected In US Jewish Vote : Rachel Zoll, Times of  Israel, October 18, 2012

Although recent studies have found potential for some movement toward the GOP, analysts say any revolution in the US Jewish vote won’t occur anytime soon.

One Mideast Success, Benghazi Bungles Blot Libya Win : Benny Avni,  New York Post, October 17, 2012

The Obama team’s bumbling response to the fatal Benghazi attack is threatening to obscure the president’s lone success in an otherwise dismal Mideast record.

Candy’s Not Dandy, Editorial, New York Post, October 17, 2012

Media bias is more often sensed than seen, but America got its faced rubbed in it Tuesday night — by debate “moderator” Candy Crowley. CNN’s Crowley selected both questions and questioners — both of which largely skewed left. She let President Obama dominate, giving him 4 minutes and 18 seconds more speaking time.