Is Barack Obama a Fool or a Liar?

Mike L.

{Cross-Posted at Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill and Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers.}

I am going with fool and let me tell you why.

In a recent piece entitled "Israelis Prefer Romney" I claimed that Obama "praised the rise of the radical Jihad as something akin to the Spirit of '76 or the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and the 1960s."

Stuart took exception to this saying:

You know Michael, a lot of your rhetoric sounds exactly like the lies that Mitt Romney tells.

Obama never "praised the rise of the radical Jihad as something akin to the Spirit of '76 or the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and the 1960s." and you damn well know it.

Because Barack Obama did, in fact, praise the rise of radical Jihad as something akin to the Spirit of '76 or the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and the 1960s, I referred Stuart to the direct quote.

Upon the revolution in Tunisia, which was just one of the various Islamist revolutions taking place across the Muslim Middle East Barack Obama said this:

There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat.

To which Stuart claimed, "He was referring to the overthrow of the non-democratic government. Not the rise of islamic jihad."

The truth, of course, is that while it is probably true that Obama thought that he was praising the overthrow of a non-democratic government, he was also praising, wittingly or not, the rise of the radical Jihad throughout the Muslim Middle East.

The question then becomes, is Barack Obama a fool or a liar?

When all the riots and rapes and bloodshed rocked the Arab world last year, many on the progressive-left, including Barack Obama, praised the chaos and murder and mayhem as actually the rise of Arab-Muslim democracy. At the time, unlike president Obama, I was willing to take a wait-and-see approach. My suspicion was that we were going to see the rise of radical Islam and that is precisely what happened, which is why the Muslim Brotherhood has taken over the government of Egypt.

Thus when Obama told the world how wonderful this all was and how it was something akin to the American Revolution and the Civil Rights Movement, I knew immediately how irresponsible and foolish such claims were and are. He was, whatever his intention, praising the rise of Islamic fascism as the wondrous up-welling of democracy.

I do not believe that Barack Obama lied. What is obviously true is that he interpreted the Arab Spring within the ideological parameters set forth by the mainstream media. Throughout that period we were generally told that the "Arab Spring" was the glorious rise of democracy and the yearning of the Arab peoples for the blessings of liberty. In this way the west, in general, and Barack Obama, in particular, projected our hopes and aspirations onto people who do not necessarily share those hopes and aspirations.

The "Arab Spring" was not about democracy, nor about overthrowing tyrants or ridding the Middle East of non-democratic governments. It was (and is) about the rise of radical Islam, a movement that subjugates women, slaughters gay people, despises non-Muslims, holds a genocidal intention toward the tiny Jewish minority in the Middle East, and that has a historical provenance that goes in part to Nazi Germany. Thus when Obama said "think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat" he was, despite his best intentions, praising "the rise of the radical Jihad as something akin to the Spirit of '76 or the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and the 1960s."

If that was not his intention then he is a fool, otherwise he is a liar.

I will go with fool.