Why the Virginian Pilot's Vile Attack on Romney is So Reprehensible

In an effort to deflect attention from the fact that it’s Middle East Policy is not just a failure, but could not have been designed better if the objective was failure, the Obama administration with its media allies is desperately trying to deflect people’s attention to something else, anything else.  And since this is election season, that something else is Mitt Romney.

Here – via Glenn Reynolds – James Taranto makes clear what is really at stake.

The Obama administration has repeatedly denounced the video that riled up the rioters in Egypt and elsewhere. But those condemnations, which we quoted yesterday, rather miss the point. The U.S. Embassy in Cairo, in its infamous apology statement, deplored “efforts . . . to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the video “inflammatory” and suggested its message is counter to “America’s commitment to religious tolerance.” Obama rejected “America’s commitment to religious tolerance.”

But although the video may indeed be insensitive, inflammatory, intolerant and insulting, that’s not why the rioters are rioting. They are rioting because in their view it is blasphemous, and therefore forbidden under Shariah. And although the Muslim Brotherhood has cannily adopted the rhetoric of wounded feelings, it is calling for the criminalization of blasphemy world-wide. . . . One suspects that, like the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran in 1979-80, Morsi and the Brotherhood have been emboldened by the U.S. administration’s apparent weakness. It’s fine for U.S. officials to denounce the video–and Mrs. Clinton today did so in even stronger terms, calling it “disgusting and reprehensible” and saying that “the United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video.”

But such declarations, on their own, will not appease the mob. They only fuel the expectation that the U.S. prosecute the video’s makers, a demand to which officials cannot yield but seem afraid to answer with a clear “no.” . . . The president takes an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” In this most solemn duty, Obama is, at best, leading from behind.

The distraction that Luzzatto and the rest of the media are creating means that the real issues, the real challenges that America faces in this long drawn-out clash of civilizations and religions will go unaddressed. America’s people will be unprepared and blindsided because the press, desperate to hold on to power and to protect this failed President, is telling us “look, a squirrel” while more American lives are lost and we become increasingly isolated and vulnerable. This is politics at its most reprehensible.