I am not an Obama fan. Never have been. But neither am I a fan of headlines and taunts that promise one thing and deliver another. Case in point, the headline at this link and the text beneath it. Compare them with what the President says in the video at the same link.
Note how he even refers to the press conference in which he originally talked about the red line: “When I said, in a press conference, that my calculus about what’s happening in Syria would be altered by the use of chemical weapons . . . ”
Only someone who willfully tries to misunderstand what Obama is saying in that video–the press conference in Sweden–could write the headline and accompanying text. In short, the claims at the link are bald face lies.
Folks, we’re in serious times. We’re at the brink of possible war. Lives are at stake. So, sure, hold the President accountable for what he says and does about Syria, but don’t make stuff up. Now is not the time to score political points based on a willful misunderstanding (aka misrepresentation) of what your political opponent says.
And yes, I’m fully aware that the current occupant of the White House and his sycophants in the media have done similar things to his opponents. Shame on all of them, red and blue.
From my Wikitour of the 206 countries of the world. In other words, this jumped out during my reading this morning. I had never heard of Massoud.
I’d now like to know more:
Ahmad Shah Massoud remained the only leader of the United Front in Afghanistan. In the areas under his control Massoud set up democratic institutions and signed the Women’s Rights Declaration. Human Rights Watch cites no human rights crimes for the forces under direct control of Massoud for the period from October 1996 until the assassination of Massoud in September 2001. As a consequence many civilians fled to the area of Ahmad Shah Massoud. In total, estimates range up to one million people fleeing the Taliban. National Geographic concluded in its documentary “Inside the Taliban”: “The only thing standing in the way of future Taliban massacres is Ahmad Shah Massoud.”
In early 2001 Massoud addressed the European Parliament in Brussels asking the international community to provide humanitarian help to the people of Afghanistan. He stated that the Taliban and al-Qaeda had introduced “a very wrong perception of Islam” and that without the support of Pakistan and bin Laden the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year. On this visit to Europe he also warned that his intelligence had gathered information about a large-scale attack on U.S. soil being imminent.
On 9 September 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated by two Arab suicide attackers inside Afghanistan and two days later about 3,000 people were killed in the September 11 attacks in the United States. (emphasis added)
That’s why some in the Muslim world were chanting the same thing back in May:
That’s why protests are happening all over the world and appear so coordinated. No, this is all because of a YouTube video. Yeah, right.
Maybe the protestors are tired of Team Obama spiking the ball. You can almost hear the jihadists thinking, “Okay, you got our guy. Enough already!”
On second thought, it’s probably Romney’s fault.
UPDATE: Regarding that movie. I haven’t seen it, but I’ll grant that it’s offensive and some in the streets of Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere are greatly offended by it. Still, I have sincere doubts that we can attribute all these protests and protestors to that movie.
I want to thank Daniel C. Peterson for pointing me (and you) to this video:
In turn, I’ll direct you to his blog where he discusses baptism for the dead. Petersen, by the way, is an Islamic scholar and teaches at BYU. You might be interested in his short book Muhammad: Prophet of God.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was in the Middle East recently to, among other things, organize the Abu Dhabi Stake and the Bahrain District out of the Manama Bahrain Stake.
Latter-day Saints in the area has tripled, from 900 when the first stake was formed 28 years ago to 2,700 today, a division was needed. The original Arabian Peninsula Stake was organized by Elder Boyd K. Packer, now President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Why didn’t I know there was a stake in the middle of the Middle East? I mean, do you know were Abu Dhabi is? Again, courtesy of the CIA:
When I say middle of the Middle East, I mean right in the middle:
Walter Russell Mead says it was Palestine and that all the bruhah about his Israel/Middle East speech is overblown or downright wrong. I agree. He writes:
On substantive grounds, it is hard to see what Obama’s critics have in mind. The US position is and has always been that the 1967 borders are the starting point for negotiations. UN Security Council Resolution 242, the basis for all negotiations on this question since it was passed in 1967, makes that very plain — although that resolution does not demand an Israeli withdrawal from all of the territory it conquered in the war. President Bush never deviated from this position; neither has President Obama. Israeli prime ministers including Likud prime ministers like Ehud Olmert have accepted this for years. This is standard diplospeak boilerplate. It is a non-statement, a platitude, even a bromide.
His post comes with a nifty little map of the controversy, courtesy of the CIA:
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