For the last two weeks, the American people have been encouraged by Team Obama - both official spokesmen for the administration, its champions in the press and other partisans - to believe a number of national security calumnies that can only be described as surrealistically epic lies and dangerous deceptions. Far more than the usual political slight-of-hand that can be expected in the run-up to an election, the mendacity of Team Obama is truly audacious, and the consequences of the public accepting it at face value are very grave.
Take, for example, Obama's insistence that the surging violence in dozens of countries is a "natural" response by Muslims to a video produced in America that trashes Islam's prophet, Mohamed. One can scarcely find an official or press account of these events that does not start with something to the effect that the attacks were precipitated by that (almost-entirely-unviewed) short film.
There are several things wrong with this proposition. First, in some places - notably, Libya where an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi resulted in the brutal murder of the American ambassador and three others assigned to that mission - there is no evidence that the film was even a pretext, let alone the real reason for what was, in fact, a disciplined, coordinated and successful act of jihad. In others, it was simply the latest excuse by Islamists to incite crowds to violence, just as Danish cartoons, burned Korans, a speech by the Pope and defiled Afghan corpses have been at one time or another in the past.
What this latest campaign of deceit by Team Obama is meant to obscure is its own national security malpractice, namely a dogged refusal to face the reality that America is at war with an enemy that they have been unwilling to name, have failed to counter and are actually emboldening. Such behavior has signaled to jihadists seeking to impose on the rest of us the totalitarian ideology they call shariah that acts of violence - or even threats of violence - against us will be met with accommodations and concessions whenever the stated justification is outrage over some perceived insult to Islam.
As recounted in this space last week, the Obama administration has already committed to engage in, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it, "old-fashioned peer-pressure and shaming" to discourage such offensive behavior. This is but a milestone (as Islamist ideologue Sayyid Qutb would say) along the trajectory of the White House's acquiescence to the shariah blasphemy agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood's state-level counterpart, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
The course of this trajectory is utterly predictable: More violence, followed by more demands for more self-imposed restrictions on free speech, which are justified as necessitated by the national security. This pattern, in turn, translates into a rising perception of our submission to the Islamists' demands, which encourages another cycle of jihadism. And on and on. What started as the U.S. government's refusal to understand or even name the enemy for fear of causing offense, may soon metastacize into a cowed submission to shariah. All in the name of "keeping the peace," of course.
We are likely to be treated to another example of Obama's staggering national security disinformation campaign in connection with the UN General Assembly meetings in New York this week. The Muslim Brotherhood's Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, is expected to use his appearances to repeat his demand that the United States release a convicted terrorist currently serving a life-sentence in federal prison, Omar Abdul Rahman, better known as the "Blind Sheikh." The Obama administration wants us to believe that such a step is notunder consideration.
Yet, Hillary Clinton's State Department gave a visa in June to one of the Blind Sheikh's fellow terrorists, Hani Nour Eldin. The reason? To facilitate discussions of Morsi's demand in meetings at the White House, State Department and on Capitol Hill. Andrew McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor who secured Abdul Rahman's conviction for conspiring to destroy the World Trade Center in 1993, warns that, despite the administration's serial and artfully worded denials, President Obama is likely to release the sheikh after the November election.
Another Obama calumny I have experienced personally, but it touches every American that speaks clearly about the threat we face. Organizations closely aligned with the White House and supportive of its pandering to Islamists - like the radical left's Center for American Progress, American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Muslim Brotherhood's Council on American Islamic Relations and the Muslim Public Affairs Council(among others) - have taken to vilifying opponents of jihadism.
Without any basis in fact, we have been called everything from "racists" and "bigots" to "Islamophobes." Our expertise on national security and threats from the shariah agenda have been denied, basically on the grounds that we have not been approved by the Muslim Brotherhood, attended a madrassa or been trained as an Islamist cleric. And lately it has been suggested that, if anything bad happens in the future involving Muslims and violence, it will be our fault.
Presumably, this assertion is designed to set the stage for prosecution of the kind we have seen in Europe and Canada on hate speech or other charges consistent with what amount to shariah blasphemy laws - once our First Amendment rights have been further shredded by Mr. Obama and his team.
Will we really accede to this succession of big lies, with all that portends for our freedom of expression, our situational awareness of the jihadist threat and our ability to resist it? Not if we want to bequeath to our children the America we inherited.