Fox News is reporting that even while members of the Obama Administration were appearing on the Sunday talk shows yesterday to blame the attacks on the film rather than on the president's policy, President el-Megarif said the idea that the murderous attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was a "spontaneous" reaction to the film was "preposterous."
"The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous," Megarif told National Public Radio.
At the same time, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was making the rounds on several talk shows insisting that the carefully timed attacks were nothing more than an impromptu reaction to a film by a California filmmaker.
"What sparked the violence was a very hateful video on the Internet," Rice told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. "It was a reaction to a video that had nothing to do with the United States."
When Wallace responded by saying, "You don't really believe that, do you?"
In response, Rice doubled down and said "absolutely", then proceeded to explain how the film started the riot which eventually drew in extremists who laid siege to the embassy, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other consulate personnel.
In addition to el-Megarif's contradictions, a local security official whose name cannot be released for security reasons said he met with American diplomats three days before the attack to warn them about deteriorating security leading up to September 11. Other senior diplomatic sources also claimed that the U.S. State Department received credible information about an attack 48 hours before it occurred.
The White House has denied that any such warnings were received.
So why would the Administration be so adamant about blaming the recent Middle East uprisings on an anti-Muslim film even when they admit to not knowing this to be true?
Writing in the Examiner, Byron York explains two motives behind the president's need to blame someone other than himself for the tragedy. First, because the administration is heavily invested politically in presenting the so-called "Arab Spring" as a movement leading to democracy, not more anti-Americanism.
Second, because the president has based much of his approach to Middle Eastern affairs on what he perceives as his own unique ability to reach out to Muslims.
"The entire point of the president’s June 2009 speech to the Muslim world, delivered in Cairo — the same city where protesters are condemning the United States today — was that Obama’s life story allowed him to understand the Muslim experience in a way that previous American leaders could not," York writes. "The fact that he spent part of his childhood in a Muslim country (Indonesia) and had many family members who were Muslim, the president apparently believed, would make many previously hostile Muslims somehow like the United States more. It didn’t. . . .
"So now, with anger at the U.S. burning throughout the region — and showing on Americans’ wide-screen TVs — it’s easier for the administration to blame the movie than to admit the president’s personal initiative failed."
York reminds that just last February the president bragged to a star-studded crowd at a Los Angeles fundraiser that "one of the proudest things of my three years in office is helping to restore a sense of respect for America around the world."
However, as York points out, events in Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere are not cooperating with Obama’s vision. Therefore, the problem "must be the movie."
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