You may be wondering why the Obama administration (in the guise of UN Ambassador Susan Rice) is claiming that last week’s protests and murders in the Middle East were spontaneous, ad hoc exhibitions of ire against an obscure anti-Islamic YouTube movie, despite the fact that the Libyan government itself is saying that the aforementioned murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and members of his staff was part of a “precalculated, preplanned attack” by a terrorist group. After all, not only is the latter explanation the more believable one (disorganized rioters rarely bring rocket-propelled grenade launchers to spontaneous demonstrations); it’s frankly the less insulting one, given that the administration is essentially taking the position that it’s reasonable to expect Muslims to bring rocket-propelled grenade launchers to spontaneous demonstrations. And yet there Ambassador Rice is there, busily embarrassing herself all over the television – and with the pitying disapproval of her peers, too.
What’s going on?
Sheer pragmatism. A clumsy lie beats admitting to eight years of hypocrisy, you see.
I won’t belabor this next point: the reason why ‘spontaneous demonstration’ is so appealing an answer for the Obama administration is because that answer absolves them of having to take most of the responsibility for letting the attacks succeed. A genuinely spontaneous reaction to something that the administration didn’t actually do would be legitimately impossible to predict and hard to defend against, and people do know that. On the other hand, if the attack was premeditated, then the questions become Why didn’t the Obama administration catch this ahead of time? and Why wasn’t the Obama administration prepared for trouble? And the reasons why those questions are problematical is because they’re the same questions that Democrats asked the Bush administration, in the aftermath of 9/11. And the Democrats were notably contemptuous of the Bush administration’s answers, back then.
Which is pretty much why Ambassador Rice did her best today to keep the Obama administration from being in the same boat. Better that the administration look like victims, instead of incompetents; and besides, who’s getting harme… err, who’s getting harmed in the Oval Office by that?
Moe Lane (crosspost)
The Obama administration began with “it’s Mitt Romney’s fault”. Which was a snotburger only liberal democrats and Joe Scarborough were willing to eat. Now, they have moved on to “it’s the fault of YouTube video no one has actually seen or a Florida preacher no one cares about”. The reasoning of passing blame in this case is to prevent Barack Obama & Hiliary Clinton from having to admit: Dick Cheney was right (amazing that the man with a sky high IQ who spent 50 years of his life on foreign policy actually knew what was talking about while two people with a combined 6 yrs in the US Senate weren’t). This is actually the same gambit, they run on the economy. Blame Bush, depressions and headwinds while at the same time claiming they have knowledge that exceeds the billionaire founder of Bain Capital while never having to meet a payroll a day in their lives.
Didn’t instead of weren’t, I apologize.
Ace of Spades had a nice piece on ‘plonking’ gambits a day or three ago – the ongoing Obama attempts to take this event out of the centuries-long culture clash is not gonna fly, but unless Romney really fouls up, ‘plonking’ is all they got.
Point and laugh.
Mew
… and then UN Ambassador Susan Rice added that the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center were a spontaneous, unplanned reaction to the in-flight movies on the airliners.
I’ll laugh when once this is proven not to work… I fear I won’t be laughing.