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Obama
to UN: It's Not My Fault Stevens is Dead
by Joel B. Pollak
Passing
the buck in dramatic fashion on the
world stage, President Barack Obama told the UN General Assembly this
morning
that the U.S. government was not responsible for the anti-Islam video
that he
once again blamed for recent attacks on U.S. embassies in the Middle
East. He
added that more guards at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi would not have
helped
save Ambassador Chris Stevens, and that the real problem was "deeper
causes" such as religious intolerance.
"[I]t
will not be enough to put more
guards in front of an Embassy; or to put out statements of regret, and
wait for
the outrage to pass," Obama told the assembled diplomats and heads of
state. "If we are serious about those ideals, we must speak honestly
about
the deeper causes of this crisis....Today, we must affirm that our
future will
be determined by people like Chris Stevens, and not by his killers.
Today, we
must declare that this violence and intolerance has no place among our
United
Nations."
While
claiming that Al Qaeda had been weakened,
Obama said that the attacks on U.S. embassies were in fact a natural
outcome of
misunderstandings on both sides--of "difficulties of reconciling
tradition
and faith with the diversity and interdependence of the modern world."
He
proceeded to attack the infamous anti-Islam video:
In
every country, there are those who find
different religious beliefs threatening. In every culture, those who
love
freedom for themselves must ask themselves how much they're willing to
tolerate
freedom for others. And that is what we saw play out in the last two
weeks,
where a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the
Muslim world.
Now, I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing
to do
with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who
respect
our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to
America as
well.
Obama
added that the U.S. could not
"ban" the video, because the "Constitution protects the right to
practice free speech." He did not mention that his administration's
policy
is, in fact, that such speech can be restricted, and that the U.S. had
co-sponsored a resolution with Egypt at the UN Human Rights Council in
2009
that would allow Islamist governments to ban such videos and claim they
had the
full support of the United States.
"I
do believe that it is the obligation of
all leaders in all countries to speak out forcefully against violence
and
extremism," Obama said, placing a filmmaker in the U.S. on equal
footing
with those who had attacked America. Obama also equated insulting
Muhammad with
denying the Holocaust:
The
future must not belong to those who slander
the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that
slander must
also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are
desecrated
or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.
Again,
Obama left out a key detail: that his
appointed diplomats had sat and listened to Iranian president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad yesterday while he defended Holocaust denial and said
Israel would
be "eliminated"--long after Israel's representatives had left the
hall in protest.
Obama
left precious little time to address the
civil war in Syria or the threat of a nuclear Iran. He gave several
pages to
assuaging the feelings of radical Muslims angry about a YouTube video;
he
provided a few sentences to the question of what to do about a
nuclear-armed
Iran, saying only that "time is not unlimited" for talks.
Source:
Breitbart
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