Back to the future

In September 2012, the Obama administration peddled the line that a hateful anti-Islamic video resulted in the attack on our consulate in Benghazi and the death of our ambassador and three of his colleagues. The administration sent Susan Rice forth to the Sunday gabfests following the September 11 attack to toe the line that the attack represented a protest that had spun out of control. Obama himself was still peddling a version of this line when he addressed the United Nations on September 25, 2012. “The future does not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” Obama proclaimed (video below).

All of this had a direct bearing on the project of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which insisted on exercising its right to mock Islam in the face of the Islamist assault on the West. On September 19, 2012, Obama flack Jay Carney castigated Charlie Hebdo at the White House. Conn Carroll quotes these pointed remarks:

“We are aware that a French magazine published cartoons featuring a figure resembling the Prophet Muhammad,” then-White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said during the September 19, 2012 press briefing, “and obviously, we have questions about the judgment of publishing something like this.”

“In other words, we don’t question the right of something like this to be published; we just question the judgment behind the decision to publish it,” Carney continued.

Carney then went onto link the [Charlie] Hedbo cartoon to the same video the White House claims caused the attacks on the U.S. asset in Benghazi: “And I think that that’s our view about the video that was produced in this country and has caused so much offense in the Muslim world.”

Carney added the obligatory afterthought: “Now, it has to be said, and I’ll say it again, that no matter how offensive something like this is, it is not in any way justification for violence — not in any way justification for violence.”

But the condemnation of Charlie Hebdo served the line peddled by Obama and his administration regarding the Benghazi attack. As of this time, the White House was still hewing to the proposition that it was a demonstration gone wrong. Thus Carney had this to say: “All I can tell you is, based on the information we had at the time — we have now, we do not yet have indication that it was preplanned or premeditated.”

On September 27, 2012, federal authorities arrested video filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula in Los Angeles and charged him with violating the terms of his probation. His arrest fulfilled Hillary Clinton’s vow to Charles Woods (father of Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, who was killed in the attack). According to Woods, Clinton told him that the government would “make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”

Recalling Obama’s 2012 UN speech yesterday, Mollie Hemingway put it this way: “The problem of such cowardly rhetoric in the face of Islamist violence certainly didn’t begin with President Obama and Hillary Clinton but they should be called to account for their tepid defense of free speech and freedom of the press.”

We know that President Obama and his team have an adversarial relationship with truth and freedom. Our freedoms are not safe in their hands. The future must not belong to those who will not support those who slander the prophet of Islam.

UPDATE: David Harsanyi is thinking along the same lines and puts it better than I do: “The future should belong to those who can slander the prophet of Islam.”

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