{"id":7354,"date":"2015-02-23T10:38:56","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T10:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/02\/23\/why-the-firestorm-rudy-spoke-the-truth-that-hurts-and-punctured-the-obama-myth\/"},"modified":"2015-02-23T10:38:56","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T10:38:56","slug":"why-the-firestorm-rudy-spoke-the-truth-that-hurts-and-punctured-the-obama-myth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/02\/23\/why-the-firestorm-rudy-spoke-the-truth-that-hurts-and-punctured-the-obama-myth\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Firestorm? Rudy Spoke the Truth that Hurts and Punctured the Obama Myth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why the furiously intemperate ranting over Rudy's remarks?  After all, the distinguished former mayor of New York City merely articulated what vast numbers of us have suspected or believed for years.  Giuliani had the temerity to speak truth to power and this enraged the Left. (Lefties think they alone own dissent<\/a> and the right to speak truth to power.)  Fred Siegel<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The ranting has obscured the reasons why so many Americans take Giuliani\u2019s remarks to heart. Starting with his June 2009 speech in Cairo, when he apologized for American actions in the Middle East, Obama has consistently given credence to Islamic grievances against America while showing reluctance to confront Islamic terrorism. In 2009, after Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 American soldiers and wounded 40 others at Fort Hood while shouting \u201cAllahu Akhbar,\u201d the administration labeled the killings workplace violence. In recent months, the pace of evasions has quickened. Obama was the only major Western leader absent from the massive Paris march held in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo<\/em> killings. Worse yet, Obama referred to the killings in a Jewish supermarket in Paris as \u201crandom\u201d acts of violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this was only the beginning of a string of curious comments and loopy locutions made by the president or his spokespeople in the weeks that followed. While ISIS rampaged across the Middle East, the president told<\/a> a Washington prayer breakfast that Christians shouldn\u2019t get on their \u201chigh horse,\u201d because they were guilty of the Crusades, among other crimes. Not only were the Crusades many centuries past, but they were also a complicated matter in which both sides behaved barbarically.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But that is to understate the matter.  Both Siegel and Giuliani failed to mention a crucial fact, namely, the  Crusades were defensive wars<\/a>, wars in response to Muslim aggression and conquest.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

But more important, Obama\u2019s comments reinforced the standard Muslim propaganda about how the jihad is merely defensive. Shortly thereafter, ISIS murdered 21 Coptic Christians in Libya (a country in complete chaos, thanks to an Obama-led Western intervention). The White House\u2019s response was to condemn the killing, not of Christians but rather of \u201cEgyptian citizens,\u201d another evasive locution. The casual listener need not have knowledge of the White House\u2019s associations with the Muslim Brotherhood<\/a> in Egypt or the administration\u2019s hostility<\/a> toward the anti-jihadist regime in Cairo to find Obama\u2019s words and behavior peculiar.<\/span><\/p>\n

As one gaffe followed another and as the president and his spokespeople engaged in semantic somersaults to avoid mentioning Islam in regard to terror, public unease mounted. It was exacerbated by a three-day conference on combating \u201cviolent extremism,\u201d the White House euphemism for Islamic terrorism. Here again, the public likely didn\u2019t know that some of the invited guests had histories of supporting jihad. The president\u2019s statements gave them enough to worry about.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bizarrely, Obama presented himself as an expert on legitimate Islam. \u201cThis is not true Islam,\u201d Obama said, referring to the ISIS creed, assuming again his role as Defender of the Islamic Faith. \u201cAl Qaeda and ISIL and groups like it .\u2009.\u2009. try to portray themselves as religious leaders, holy warriors in defense of Islam,\u201d Obama said. \u201cWe must never accept the premise that they put forward, because it is a lie.\u201d Operatives of al-Qaida and ISIS \u201care not religious leaders,\u201d Obama insisted. \u201cThey\u2019re terrorists.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Listening to speakers at the conference\u2014to which the FBI had not been invited\u2014you would think that, if only American Muslims were treated better, ISIS would wither on the vine. \u201cWe in the administration and the government should give voice to the plight of Muslims living in this country and the discrimination that they face,\u201d said Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson. \u201cAnd so I personally have committed to speak out about the situation that very often people in the Muslim community in this country face.\u201dThe real issue, Johnson suggested, was not Islamic terrorism but Islamophobia. The casual listener might surmise that Johnson\u2019s remarks had less to do with ISIS than with winning the 2016 Muslim vote in key states such as Michigan and Ohio.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same conference, Obama announced, or more accurately pronounced, that Islam \u201chas been woven into the fabric of our country since its founding.\u201d As one friend asked me: \u201cWhat is he talking about?\u201d America\u2019s earliest encounter with Islam came in the form of seventeenth-century colonists purchasing slaves from Muslim slave traders in Africa. The next came when President Thomas Jefferson was forced to fight the Barbary Pirates<\/a>. Surely, these weren\u2019t the examples Obama had in mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the midst of these attempts to achieve what a magician would call misdirection, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf explained that, if there were only more jobs in the Middle East, ISIS would have a harder time recruiting. But then again, if there was less Islamic extremism, more jobs might be created. Harf referred to the \u201croot causes\u201d of terrorism much as liberal Democrats have long referred to the \u201croot causes\u201d of poverty, with about the same degree of insight.<\/span><\/p>\n

With all the atrocities that the ISIS fanatics have committed, Obama\u2019s anger has been more often directed not at them, but at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The animosity between the two men has never been a secret, but now, with Obama\u2019s term in office waning, he is determined to cut a deal on the Iranian nuclear program on terms much to Tehran\u2019s liking. Netanyahu is an obstacle to that goal.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of this, then, was a backdrop to Giuliani\u2019s remarks, in which he called out Obama for the president\u2019s many rhetorical bluffs. If the former mayor\u2019s words have created a firestorm, it\u2019s because for many, they have helped make sense of Barack Obama\u2019s words and actions. Attacking Giuliani, and trying to delegitimize him with the racist label, will do little to allay public anxieties about an administration short on competence but long on ideological evasion\u2014and blessed with media allies.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Richard Fernandez shows<\/a> the role of the Obama cult of personality in the media firestorm.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>The Moral Idiocy of Barack Obama<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>How About a Six-Month Suspension Without Pay for Barack Obama?<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Another Double Standard<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why the furiously intemperate ranting over Rudy's remarks?  After all, the distinguished former mayor of New York City merely articulated what vast numbers of us have suspected or believed for years.  Giuliani had the temerity to speak truth to power and this enraged the Left. (Lefties think they alone own dissent and the right to … Continue reading “Why the Firestorm? Rudy Spoke the Truth that Hurts and Punctured the Obama Myth”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}