Obama off script (again)

Friday, September 14, 2012

When a president of the United States has to give an interview declaring explicitly that he supports the First Amendment — you know he screwed up somewhere.

There was President Barack Obama on Air Force One yesterday, telling CBS’ Steve Kroft, “We believe in the First Amendment.” According to a transcript provided by the White House, Obama added, “We are always going to uphold the rights of individuals to speak their mind.”

This must have come as shocking news to the redneck reverend down in Florida who had just gotten a phone call from Obama’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff bullying him for speaking his.

How did we come to this sad, sorry state where even as a mob of Islamists is attacking an American embassy, the State Department is issuing statements denouncing Americans for expressing their opinions?

On Tuesday, hours before the attack on our Cairo embassy, the State Department posted a statement reading in part, “The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims . . . We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”

The “individuals” in question are Americans who made a YouTube video disparaging the Prophet Muhammad. They posted it on YouTube months ago, but it was used as a pretext on 9/11 for yet another attack against America.

What makes this statement from the Cairo Embassy so disturbing is that after the mob turned violent, ripped down and burned the U.S. flag and then hoisted an al-Qaida banner on American soil, the embassy re-issued the same apologetic statement to the very people attacking them.

The next day, after Islamists killed our ambassador in Libya, Obama backed up the Cairo embassy’s message in a statement from the White House: “Since our founding, the U.S. has been a nation that respects all faiths and rejects all effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others,” he said, before denouncing the deadly attacks themselves.

We’re getting attacked, and our president is talking about “denigrating” religious beliefs? Ask the family of Ambassador Christopher Stevens about being “denigrated.”

When you saw Islamist kooks pulling down the U.S. flag, was your reaction “Well, that’s what we get for letting Americans make bad movies. Wait ‘til this mob sees the new Adam Sandler flick — it’ll be a bloodbath!” When you found out yet another 9/11 attack claimed American lives, did you get angry over the Constitution?

Of course not. You were angry at the killers, at the people who committed the violence — not some low-budget movie-making schmuck in California.

Which is why Obama has had to backtrack so far, eventually distancing himself from his own embassy staff and denouncing their statement himself.

For all the attacks on Mitt Romney, he was speaking for most Americans when he said, “I think it’s a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values. That instead, when our grounds are being attacked and being breached, that the first response of the United States must be outrage at the breach of the sovereignty of our nation.”

For Obama, the problem is never the Islamists. It’s always the (small d) democrats. It’s Americans with “bad” opinions, or the democratically-elected government of Israel. He’s always got a problem with them.

In fact, the only religion I’ve heard Obama “denigrate” was that of the “bitter” Christians in Western Pennsylvania, “clinging to their religion” during the 2008 election.

You know, if I said as many dopey things as our president does, I’d probably have my doubts about the value of free speech, too.

Michael Graham hosts an afternoon drive time talk show on 96.9 WTKK.

Source: Boston Herald