So much for that. After last night’s “September surprise,” Obama is still home free, and Mitt Romney is still trailing. In fact, this might well be the death knell for his campaign. But what an uproar.
Romney’s attempt to exploit the violent anti-U.S. demonstrations in Egypt and Libya to portray Obama as soft on America’s enemies backfired almost immediately, when it became clear the statement from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo he had cited was issued before the demonstrations began. Overnight, the tragic news came that Chris Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, and three other U.S. officials were killed while trying to flee the besieged U.S. consulate in Benghazi. But still the Mittster didn’t quit seeking to gain political advantage. Speaking in Florida this morning, he repeated the charge that the Obama Administration was failing to stand up for things Americans hold dear, such as freedom of speech. The White House was “standing in apology for our values” and following a “terrible course,” Romney said.
The reaction to Romney’s desperate gambit has been almost universally negative. About the only people who are sticking up for him today are Jim DeMint, the Tea Party senator from South Carolina, and Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard. Even Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, failed to echo his line of attack. Speaking in Wisconsin, Ryan described the killings in Libya as “pretty disturbing,” but he didn’t criticize Obama, and he said it was “a time for healing.”
There will be plenty of time to discuss the rights and wrongs. But before getting into all that, I thought it might be worth setting down how the past twenty-four hours unfolded. With events taking place in three countries, on two continents, there has been a lot of confusion about who said what when. Here’s a quick timeline I put together from the Web. As far as I can see, Romney doesn’t come out of it looking any better. But it does indicate that his attacks initially caused some concern in the White House—enough concern for the Administration to try and distance itself from its loyal servants in Cairo.
Ironically, it all began with a temporary truce between the campaigns to mark the anniversary of 9/11. But yesterday afternoon, demonstrators surrounded the U.S. embassies in Cairo and Benghazi to protest an anti-Islam film, a lengthy trailer for which can be seen on You Tube, that reportedly depicts the prophet Mohammad as a womanizer, a child molester, and an imposter. Initially, the focus was on Egypt. Around noon local time, before the protests against the video began but following threats of violence, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo posted this statement online:
The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims—as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.
Embassy staffers also issued a number of tweets that made similar points. Some of these messages were subsequently deleted, but not before a number of Republicans and conservative journalists here in the United States were alerted. One of the tweets said, “We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.” Another said, “Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy.” (A report from CBC, the Canadian news organization, reproduces some of the tweets.)
As the day and evening wore on, a couple of thousand demonstrators gathered outside the Cairo embassy. According to a Reuters report from the scene, most of them were youthful supporters of Islamic groups or “ultras,” the soccer fans who played a big role in bringing down Hosni Mubarak. Some of the demonstrators tried to scale the walls of the fortress-liked compound. Eventually, they succeeded, seizing a U.S. flag and setting it alight before the television cameras. Reuters reports that there were about twenty people atop the embassy wall, and they tried to raise their own black flag, emblazoned with the words: “There is no god but God, and Mohammad is his messenger.”
In Benghazi, a city in eastern Libya, meanwhile, a similar protest was taking place, and it, too, was turning violent. Militia men armed with grenades raided the U.S. consulate and set it on fire. Initially, Libyan officials said that one embassy worker had been killed. “The other staff members were evacuated and are safe and sound,” Libya’s deputy interior minister Wanis al-Sharif told AFP news agency. A news story from the BBC posted at about 9 P.M. E.T. said that the identity of the dead U.S. official wasn’t yet known, but he had reportedly been shot.
In response to the killing, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement on Tuesday night that said,
I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today. As we work to secure our personnel and facilities, we have confirmed that one of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who have suffered in this attack.
The statement went on to mention the anti-Islam video that had sparked the demonstrations:
Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.
While all this was happening, conservative bloggers and Republicans were seizing upon the statements from the Cairo embassy as an opportunity to criticize the Obama Administration for showing weakness in the face of attacks. Some of them were confusing the timing of the statements, mistakenly suggesting they were put out after the demonstrations and incursions had begun. Evidently fearful that it was was politically vulnerable, the Obama Administration moved to distance itself—a pretty disreputable move, given what its diplomats had just gone through. “The statement by Embassy Cairo was not cleared by Washington and does not reflect the views of the United States government,” an Administration official told Byron Tau, a reporter for Politico, who promptly posted a story headlined, “Obama administration disavows Cairo apology.” (The embassy statement was not actually an apology, but that had been lost, too.)
That wasn’t enough for the Romney campaign. It had prepared a statement that was embargoed until midnight, thereby keeping to the 9/11 truce. But as things hotted up it decided to move early. At 10:09 P.M., according to an informative backgrounder at Buzzfeed, Andrea Saul, a Romney spokeswoman, e-mailed reporters with a ready-to-use statement from Romney that said,
I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.
Once Romney’s inflammatory statement hit the Internet, a frenzy ensued on Twitter and the political Web sites, with reporters parsing the various statements and speculating about the deleted embassy tweets. By midnight, several other G.O.P. heavies had criticized the Administration, including Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. “Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic,” Priebus tweeted. And Sarah Palin also weighed in. In a lengthy post on her Facebook page, she said: “Apparently, President Obama can’t see Egypt and Libya from his house…. We already know that President Obama likes to ‘speak softly’ to our enemies. If he doesn’t have a ‘big stick’ to carry, maybe it’s time for him to grow one.”
The Obama campaign pushed back. Just after midnight, Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, sent an e-mail to reporters that said, “We are shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya, Governor Romney would choose to launch a political attack.”
That was about it for Tuesday night. This morning came the news that four U.S. officials in Benghazi, not one, had been killed while attempting to flee the besieged consulate, and that Ambassador Stevens was among them. But this news didn’t persuade Romney to change his tone—far from it. Appearing at a hastily arranged press conference in Jacksonville, he reiterated his earlier criticisms, saying,
The president takes responsibility not just for the words that come from his mouth, but also for the words that come from his ambassadors, from his Administration, from his embassies, from his State Department. They clearly sent mixed messages to the world. The statement that came from the Administration—and the embassy is the Administration—the statement that came from the Administration was a statement which is akin to apology. And I think was a severe miscalculation.
Other Republicans struck a more conciliatory note. On Capitol Hill, John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, ordered flags to be lowered to half-mast. Reince Preibus tweeted, “Our prayers are w/Ambassador Stevens’ family and the families of those killed in the attacks in Libya. We mourn their loss and grieve w/them.”
Shortly after ten-thirty this morning, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton appeared together in the White House Rose Garden. The President paid tribute to Stevens and his dead colleagues, and he vowed to exact justice on the perpetrators. He also referenced the video that started it all, saying,
We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification for this type of senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts.
The “severe miscalculation” may have been Romney’s.
Original Article
Source: new yorker
Author: John Cassidy
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