The refrain all day and night on Fox News has been to mostly cover for Mitt Romney’s huge blunder of a press statement about the anti-American violence in Egypt and Libya and ratchet up anger and fear toward President Obama. Yesterday, “objective” show host Megyn Kelly brought out “strategic analyst” Lt. Col. Ralph Peters to use the situation to smear President Obama – with a little help from Kelly.
Kelly began the segment with a gratuitous swipe at President Obama. She sneered that he’s “already back on the campaign trail” despite the rioting in Egypt and Libya. She didn’t mention what she thought he should be doing. But I’m willing to bet that even if he were doing it, Fox would swipe at him about that, too. She sneered again, “Absent from his remarks, an earlier attack in neighboring Egypt.”
Of course, absent from Kelly’s remarks were how Romney made a fool of himself on the world stage that day with his untoward response. As AP reported:
In Washington, Republican foreign policy veterans called Romney’s initial statement premature and rushed, with limited facts and an incomplete understanding of what was happening in Egypt and Libya.
Instead, Kelly allowed Peters to say, without challenge, “Obama administration is telling more lies than a boy in a backseat.”
Peters continued, “The Obama administration needs to forget that there’s an election in two months, get serious about protecting Americans, protecting our embassies and about our foreign policy. And, oh by the way, let’s not rush to throw Israel under the bus.”
No challenge from Kelly there, either. Details about what makes Peters say such a thing? Who needs ‘em? Not Fox News, that’s for sure.
Instead, Kelly went on to suggest incompetence and appeasement were dogging the Obama administration: “This film (that sparked the protests) is a YouTube film by some guy in California, we’re told. We don’t really know anything about him… Why would our embassy be coming out and apologizing to these Muslim protesters in Cairo about that, Ralph, and is there an argument that they needed to do it to try to tamp down the protests that were swelling and it was just an effort to sort of keep the peace that clearly did not work?”
“Yeah, clearly did not work,” Peters agreed. He threw in some more unfounded attacks next. “Look, the problem is that we have members, some members of the diplomatic corps, and many in the government, who place political correctness above our Constitution.”
No challenge from “objective” Kelly there, either!
Peters said that he’s personally disgusted with attacks on any religion. “But the apologies at some point have to stop. We need to defend our Constitution and not elevate political correctness above it… I wish people would worry a little bit less about getting re-elected and more about our Constitution, our values and protecting Americans. Bottom line here, Megyn: the administration let its guard down on September 11th, of all days, and now they’re trying to lie their way out of it.”
Kelly let all that go by unchallenged, too. Instead, she asked, with hammy gravity, “Ralph, is this an act of war?”
Legally, no, Peters said. “But it’s certainly a war-like act. And here’s how we need to respond: …In Egypt, you respond by telling the Morsi government, the Muslim Brotherhood government, this EVER happens again, anything like it ever happens again, the billions of dollars a year (in aid) go away… In Libya, where the government cannot protect itself yet – it’s weak, it’s young – we need to track down the Salafists behind this massacre and kill every one of them. No prisoners, kill them.”
Kelly said, with more than a hint of disbelief, “President Obama promises that justice will be done.”
“Good luck,” Peters said sarcastically.
And the world’s population was estimated to have passed the 7 billion mark back in March (we can safely presume that it’s gone past 7 billion if it hadn’t actually reached it back then).
Considering how one defines “expats,” they may or may not have been included. Being an “expat” doesn’t necessarily mean one has given up his citizenship so an expat citizen would still be counted in the census. For an expat who HAS given up his citizenship, he wouldn’t be considered a citizen or a resident (resident aliens, even undocumented aliens, are included in Census figures *if they responded to the Census). Currently, there are only a little over 5 million presumed American expats who were counted in the Census.
So, what are we to make of this statement, especially considering the way that FoxNoise has spent hundreds (if not thousands) of hours demanding that the Obama Administration “apologize” to Christians (especially Catholics) for its health care program which—according to FoxNoise—does nothing but trample on Americans’ religious freedoms?
Oh, and how does Peters’ statement jibe with FoxNoise’s continual allowing guests on its “news” (as opposed to its “opinion”) shows to spout nonsense about Obama’s religious beliefs?
Oh, and that little jibe at “September 11th, of all days?” It looks like someone excelled at “unintentional irony,” considering the way that a previous administration “let its guard down” in a far more serious way on a prior September 11th, and then used that to “lie their way” into a truly unnecessary war in one country while failing to finish a war it started in another country.
I’m sorry, but, the way I’m reading this statement, it seems that Peters is suggesting—correction, stating—that our foreign policy should ultimately be secondary to how we deal with Israel. Maybe “Lt Col” Peters should take his military “expertise” to Israel which, apparently, is the country he’d prefer to serve.
A few numbers may put things into perspective: the USA has a population of around 400 million (including expats); the total population of the world recently topped six billion; and the total number of Muslims works out to just over 1.6 billion. We are seriously out-numbered, folks.