The problem with pinning the blame for terrorism on Bush is every president since Nixon, now including Obama, has seen atrocities committed by radical Islam. Here’s a short list of examples:
Jim Spence |
Palestinian terrorists killed eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics. In 1975 a bomb went off at New York’s La Guardia airport killing eleven people and injuring another 75. In 1979 52 diplomats were seized at the U.S. Embassy in Iran and held for 444 days. In 1983 an explosion at U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killed 309 people. In 1988, a passenger jet was destroyed in mid-flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie killing 270 people. The 1993 World Trade Center 1993 bombings killed six Americans. The U.S.S. Cole was bombed in Yemeni waters in 2000 killing 19 Americans. All of these attacks occurred before George W. Bush was sworn in for his first term or the attacks on 9-11.
Since 2009 Obama has tried the following: apologizing to radical Islam during his tours of the Middle East, putting our relationship with Israel in the deep freeze, removing Libyan dictator Qaddafi, and embracing the so-called Arab Spring. How have these tactics worked out? Violent terrorists were burning American flags all over the Middle East last month even before the murders of diplomats at Benghazi.Hopefully in the final presidential debate Obama is going to feel like Lucy Ricardo caught in an elaborate scheme. He definitely has some ‘splaining’ to do even though this is no laughing matter. For starters, Obama needs to explain how a ridiculous lie about a demonstration in Benghazi, one that never happened, got represented as facts to the American people. He is also going to have to explain why he and his surrogates continued to repeat that outrageous lie over and over for weeks. Simply blaming people working for Hillary Clinton won’t work.
You can bet on what Obama won’t do in the final debate. First, he won’t tell the American people his administration cooked up that story to make sure voters wouldn’t get the impression his non-Bush-like approach to radical Islam turned out to be wishful thinking. Second, you can bet he won’t admit his campaign criticism of how George W. Bush dealt with bloodthirsty murderers was nothing but a cynical political ploy. And finally, you can bet he won’t concede that what happened in Libya wasn’t a bump in the road or non-optimal response.
The yarn the administration spun on Benghazi was simply an attempt to whitewash the consequences of utter naivety and incompetence that followed a disturbing criticism of his predecessor in the 2008 campaign.