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Obama Says He Didn't Say What He
Said
Talking Sides blog asks, did Barack Obama come out
in favor of the building of a mosque just steps away from where Islamic
extremists slaughtered almost 3,000 Americans on 9/11? To
paraphrase former President Bill Clinton, it depends on what your
definition of "right" is. At last night's White House event to
observe the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Obama said that he believes
"Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else
in this country" and "that includes the right to build a place of
worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan,
in accordance with local laws and ordinances." After a major
political backlash today which everyone (except Obama) could see coming
from the instant the words left his mouth, Obama is trying to distance
himself from his own statements.
Asked about his remarks at last
night's festivities, Obama
claimed,
"I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the
decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically
on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That's
what our country is about. And I think it's very important as
difficult as some of these issues are that we stay focused on who we are
as a people and what our values are all about."
It will be up to
each individual to decide for themselves whether Obama supported the
building of the mosque on Friday and backed away from that position on
Saturday or, as he now claims, he never actually took a position on
whether that mosque should be built on that site. But what is
undeniable is that in his comments on Friday night before an audience
that was decidedly in favor of the project, he said what he needed to
say to receive an enthusiastic standing ovation from those assembled.
Our Narcissist-In-Chief once again chose to garner instant
gratification, praise and glory from a targeted group before thinking
about and considering all of the people he is sworn to serve.
This is yet another instance of Obama trying to bolster his own
popularity with certain groups in certain moments (remember "the police
acted stupidly?") instead of providing true leadership on the difficult
issues we face.
No doubt Obama's original comments on the Ground
Zero mosque and his subsequent backpedaling will have a negative
political effect on his fellow Democrats running in November. But
as long as he got to bask in the warmth of a "standing O" at yet another
lavish White House event, I doubt he cares.
Obama Continues To Propagate His Lies And
Ignorance
In his article, "Obama
Lied, AIPAC Died," Daniel Horowitz says at the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference on
Sunday, Obama continued to propagate his lies and ignorance regarding
the history of U.S. foreign policy towards Israel. Undaunted by
recent criticism, Obama doubled down on his demand that Israel return to
indefensible borders by creating a contiguous Palestinian state.
As such, he continued to display his ignorance of the geographical
reality that a contiguous Hamas-Fatah state bordering Jordan and Egypt,
as stipulated in both speeches, means a noncontiguous Israel. I
guess he can see a Palestinian state (and unicorns) from the White
House.
He also regurgitated his cloddish platitude that
Hamas must "accept the basic responsibilities of peace." I could
only imagine FDR declaring that the Nazis must change their ways and
accept responsibility for peace. Moreover, Obama’s teleprompter
continued to lie about the dangers of the "Arab Spring," especially in
Egypt, to Israel’s (and America’s) security. He even castigated
them by saying, "If there is a controversy, then, it’s not based in
substance." Concurrently, he made sure to mention the names of his
token liberal Jews like Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, and Debbie
Wasserman-Schultz so that everything would appear kosher. It was
also helpful that Imam Magid, an unindicted co-conspirator with Hamas,
wasn’t in attendance this time, as he was last Thursday.
As vacuous as Obama’s
intellect really is, he is not that ignorant of geography, nor is he
credulous enough to believe that Hamas will put away its jihadi toys
some day and accept Israel. He knows exactly what his Palestinian
fantasy will bring forth; he knows precisely how Israel will appear on a
map with a contiguous terror state that borders Egypt and Jordan.
Nonetheless, his speech was warmly received (at least from AIPAC’s
leaders, if not some grassroots activists). After all, AIPAC’s
leader, former Obama adviser and prolific fundraiser Lee Rosenberg,
admonished them to behave.
Unfortunately, AIPAC has been
run by hard-core Democrats for years. Recently, as support for
Israel among Democrats has taken a nosedive, AIPAC leaders have taken it
upon themselves to ensconce this inconvenient truth by providing cover
for Democrats. It’s time for AIPAC to confront the inconvenience
and reveal that it is the moral and intellectual clarity of
conservatism-the very ideology that they reject-that will save Israel.
Republicans should also blow the cover off the notion of bi-partisan
support for Israel and expose the duplicity of AIPAC and the Democrats
by proposing tough anti-PLO/Hamas legislation.
Israel has enjoyed bi-partisan
support from Congress since the incipient days of its founding.
While most other nations, and all too often, our own State Department,
treated Israel as a pariah state, Congress served as the defender of the
tiny beacon of freedom amidst Islamic despotism.
However, as the Republican
Party became distinctly conservative, and as the Democrat Party became
decisively and vociferously liberal, Israel became a wedge issue between
the parties. Conservatives, with their intrepid moral clarity,
intuitively support our allies in the war on terror and reject the
notion that you can negotiate with terrorists to create a new Islamic
state. Liberals, with their inherent moral relativism, have bought
into the notion of Israel as an "occupier" and strongly support the
18-year old failed "peace" process. Hence, the ideological
bifurcation between the parties has become glaring to everyone except
for the "pro-Israel" Democrat apologists at AIPAC.
In recent years, Republican
support for Israel has hovered around 80%-85%, while Democrat support
dipped as low as 48% in 2010, according to Gallup. Furthermore, as
the Democrat leaders seek to make our foreign policy obsequious to the
anti-Israel "international community," conservative leaders are seeking
to punish the U.N. for their mistreatment of Israel. Unvarnished
support for Israel is so universal among Republican presidential
candidates that the liberal media is mocking them with the pejorative of
"Israel primary".
