Egypt and Libya, Obama's Frankenstein

Originally Posted at American Thinker

In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein is responsible for creating a monster.  Realizing his mistake, however, Victor becomes horrified of his own creation.  Victor grows even more despondent with the knowledge that the monster he created is guilty of murder. 

This is the point in the story where the similarities between Victor and Obama, who have both created monsters, end.  One is horrified and remorseful over the monster he created.  The other feels no remorse.  It is left to the reader to decide if this lack of remorse is due to Obama’s inability to recognize that he has created a monster.  Or is remorse missing because the monster is exactly what Obama intended to create in the first place?

The civilized world was horrified, yet not surprised to see the monster Obama created rear its ugly head in Egypt and in Libya.  Many were equally disturbed by the actions of an administration bent on convincing people that the monster is tame and wouldn’t hurt a fly if only people would quit prodding it with the stick of religious bigotry.  After all, monsters have feelings too.

The Obama administration acted quickly to distance itself from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo’s apology that seemed to justify the monster’s behavior in Egypt.  After all, it is an election year.  In an interview with Steve Kroft for 60 Minutes, Obama said of the apology, “In an effort to cool the situation down, it didn't come from me, it didn't come from Secretary Clinton. It came from people on the ground who are potentially in danger.”

In other words, “I didn’t try to pat the monster on the head.  And I didn’t try to blame the people who made the monster mad.”  When in fact, that’s precisely what Obama has done and taught his administration to do from the minute he was sworn into office.

Since coming into office, Obama has used the platform of his presidency to continuously laud Islam, portray Muslims as victims of Islamophobia, and to defend the rights of Muslims around the world before defending the rights of U.S. citizens.  He has become the poster boy and puppet of the Organization of the Islamic Conference who for over a decade has systematically worked to criminalize the “defamation of Islam” and to protect Islam from “blasphemy,” i.e. telling the truth about it.  In yearly resolutions at the UN on “combating defamation of religions” the OIC complains that, “Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism."  That claim would be hysterical if it weren’t so tragic.

To the delight of the OIC, Obama and his administration have worked hard to reprogram America’s collective consciousness regarding Islam by instructing us that: Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, Muslims who kill in the name of Islam or Mohammad don’t really represent Islam, and that America never has been, nor will be in a war with Islam.  Such are the nuts and bolts of building a Frankenstein.

In his 2009 Cairo speech Obama said, “I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”  He continued, “As a student of history I understand more about civilization's debt to Islam . . . I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story.”  He failed to mention that the most significant chapter of that story happened on 9/11/01.

At a White House interfaith dinner honoring Ramadan in 2009, Obama reiterated, “The contribution of Muslims to the United States are too long to catalog because Muslims are so interwoven into the fabric of our communities and our country.” 

In 2010 in Mumbai, India, Obama said, “Islam embodies a religion of peace, fairness and tolerance.”  How appropriate to say in a country where hundreds of people have been killed by Islamic terrorists.  Who cares about the feelings of the victims’ families?  It’s the Muslims’ feelings. stupid.

The same sentiment was echoed in his address to the Turkish Parliament and in Indonesia.  He said, “Let me say this as clearly as I can. The United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical.  We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over so many centuries to shape the world for the better, including my own country."

Helping him build the monster, John Brennan of Homeland Security and Counterrorism said, “Tolerance and diversity define Islam,” while Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough added that mosques were a "typically American place." 

Backing his rhetoric with policy, Obama gave NASA a new charge.  The 21^st century final frontier; going forth into Muslim countries to bolster their feelings.  NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in an interview with al-Jazeera that NASA was not only a space exploration agency but also an, "earth improvement agency."  Bolden said, "When I became the NASA administrator, Obama charged me with three things. One, he wanted me to help inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering."  There’s that touchy feely thing again.  Is it any wonder that workers at the US Embassy in Cairo were worried about the feelings of Muslims? 

Besides NASA, Obama’s monster reared its head in the Department of Justice.  In 2011, Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole said, “I recently directed all components of the Department of Justice to re-evaluate their training efforts in a range of areas, from community outreach to national security.” This “reevaluation” included the removal of all references to Islam in connection with any investigation of jihad terror activity perpetrated by, you guessed it, adherents to Islam.  Think Fort Hood.  A Muslim cries “Allahu Akbar!” before killing soldiers and citizens on U.S. soil, but the administration won’t call it an act of jihad or terrorism.

In helping Cole, Dwight C. Holton, former assistant U.S. Attorney, emphasized that training materials for the FBI would be purged of everything politically incorrect, i.e. purged of any insinuation that a terrorist act might be committed in the name of Islam.  Holton said, “I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for. They will not be tolerated.”  Imagine if he condemned acts of terrorism as strongly as he condemned political incorrectness.

Holton said that he discussed the FBI training materials with Attorney General Eric Holder.  He told Holder that the materials were “egregiously false,” and that Holder was “firmly committed to making sure that this is over” and that “we’re going to fix it.”  Holton said that this “fix” was particularly urgent because the rejected training materials “pose a significant threat to national security, because they play into the false narrative propagated by terrorists that the United States is at war with Islam.”  Yet another example of blaming the supposed stick that prods the monster, rather than blaming the monster.

The aforementioned Deputy NSA Denis McDonough reiterated Obama’s focus on America’s indebtedness to Islam, rather than finding it necessary for national security to focus on the dangers of Islamists.  In praise of Obama’s Cairo speech, McDonough said, “So the message the President wants to send is not different, frankly, than the one he’s been sending since he was inaugurated, namely that we believe that this is an opportunity for us in the United States, who, frankly, have arrived at a place here based on many of the advances that come out of the Muslim world, be it science out of Baghdad, be it math and technology out of Al-Andalus or otherwise.”

Three years later is it any surprise that McDonough chose to call the video used as justification for the attacks in Egypt and Libya “truly abhorrent” rather than calling the attacks abhorrent?  Yet, another example of blaming the supposed stick that prods the monster rather than the actions of the monster.  While describing the utopian vision of learning to live with the monster, McDonough said that he endorsed efforts to create "a world where the dignity of all people and all faiths is respected," i.e., a world where people shut-up and tolerate the murderous behavior of Muslims who get their feelings hurt. “This work takes on added urgency given the truly abhorrent video that has offended so many people -- Muslims, and non-Muslims alike -- in our country and around the world."

After the horrors committed by the monster in Egypt and Libya, Obama told Egyptian President Morsi that he still “rejects efforts to denigrate Islam.”  No surprise there.

What is most telling about this sordid, pathetic tale is the way that some of the embassy officials chose to use their time as the monster neared the embassy.  They tweeted.  In their Obama-induced delusion they actually thought a tweet would stop the monster their leader had created.  That is one of the scariest parts of the tale.  That an adult, working for the U.S. government, could be that stupid, passive and appeasing when being threatened and then attacked.  And Obama is counting on “we the people” being that stupid, passive and appeasing too.