Factor # 3: Obama Derangement Syndrome

Rule of thumb: to ensure that large numbers of people swallow a rumor, no matter how wacky, just insert the word “Obama” into it. From birth certificates to death panels to socialized medicine to Islamic Nazism to FEMA concentration camps, nothing is too idiotic for people to believe if it attacks the current U.S. president. But of course none of it could possibly have anything to do with racism. So don’t you even suggest such a thing.

But in addition to the usual rumors that we’ve already discussed in the post The Biggest, Baddest, Brassiest Lies About Barack Obama (and a Few Dishonorable Mentions), the stage of world events dropped a new gift into the laps of the Obama Haters just a few weeks before election day: the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya. Now we all know what happens when there is a terrorist attack against Americans: Americans put aside their differences and unite behind their commander-in-chief.

No, wait. That was during the Bush years.  On his watch there were no  fewer than 7 — count them, SEVEN — deadly attacks on U.S. consulates and embassies. No big deal, eh? But that was then, and this is now; and the new way of the world is to exploit such an occasion to the hilt for political partisanship and fresh smears against the cat in The Oval Office.

First, there was a major brouhaha about Obama failing to call the incident a terrorist attack immediately. That’s right: “conservatives” who love to kvetch about the “word police” associated with “political correctness” were chomping at the bit to impeach the president over a single word — not because he used it, but because he didn’t.

Except that, um, he did. The day after the attack, he delivered a speech about it from The Rose Garden, in which he said:

“No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.  Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America…”

Hmmm… The purpose of this speech was to make a statement about the attack in Benghazi. So you don’t think it’s possible that maybe he meant the words acts of terror to apply to that event? Well, if not, there was another speech a day later, in which he said:

“So what I want all of you to know is that we are going to bring those who killed our fellow Americans to justice. I want people around the world to hear me: To all those who would do us harm, no act of terror will go unpunished.”

So for those who want to make a major issue out of his terminology, there you have it. Not good enough for Mitt Romney and many others, however, who insist that the administration didn’t officially and explicitly label it as terrorism until 14 days later, which would prove… well, something, I’m sure.

And after all, there was also speculation that an anti-Islam video might have helped inspire the timing; and if that’s the case, it couldn’t possibly also be a planned act of terror, could it? Apparently not, at least not in right-wing fantasyland. (In fact, some of the attackers themselves commented that the video was the catalyst for their actions.) To top it off, the president’s officials stated that the administration was still investigating the incident — and heaven forbid that a president actually should do his homework.

But the silliness didn’t end there. Led by Fox ‘News” which seemed determined to dissolve any lingering trace of doubt about its utter lack of scruples, right-wing extremists launched the meme that there was a “cover-up”  of Benghazi, even if they didn’t quite make it clear just what was being covered up or why, and spread the outrageous lies that the administration was slow to respond, had refused back-up to personnel there (back-up actually arrived almost immediately), and “abandoned Americans to die”. They were determined to make a scandal out of the tragedy, to paint it as yet another in the president’s series of supposed Watergates.  (At least one source reports that security had been scaled down that evening at the request of the late Ambassador Stevens himself, who was having a tryst with his boyfriend. If Obama is “covering up” anything, it could be that, out of respect for Mr. Stevens.)

It’s especially galling to see Republicans try to lynch the president for his supposed laxity in security when they themselves have been gutting the funding for State Department security. As Dana Milbank notes in The Washington Post:

For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department’s Worldwide Security Protection program — well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration’s request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration’s request.) Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans’ proposed cuts to her department would be “detrimental to America’s national security” — a charge Republicans rejected.

Playing the “Liberal Bias” Card

And it’s especially disconcerting to see noted science fiction/ fantasy writer Orson Scott Card, for whom I’d heretofore had a great deal of respect and admiration, commit himself to this nuthouse, excoriating the president in the vilest terms imaginable — including, natch, plenty of Hitler references. Card is, like Mitt Romney, a Mormon; and I suppose it’s understandable that such ideological kinship might jaundice his judgment and lead him to conclude that Romney is “a decent, intelligent, moderate, honest man of proven ability”. (You may pause here to catch your breath before resuming.) But that hardly accounts for or excuses his delusions about President Obama, whose response to Sandy was, he affirms, at least as inept as Bush’s response to Katrina. No, seriously.

One suspects that Mr. Card has kept his head in the fantasy realm so much that he’s taken up permanent residence. In his alternate universe (where Kenneth Starr is a noble and intrepid muckraker who was doing the media’s job for them) the librulmedia conspired with Obama to cover up The Truth About Benghazi and get him reelected; and Fox “News” is the last bastion of honest and conscientious mainstream journalism. Meanwhile, here in our own universe, Fox’s coverage of Benghazi was, like its coverage of everything else, an orgy of smears, misinformation, irresponsible conspiratorial speculation, and wholesale fabrication. The network was instrumental in torpedoing the nomination of Susan Rice for Secretary of State, crucifying her for stating — CORRECTLY — that U.S. intelligence suspected — CORRECTLY — the offensive video was a catalyst. Fox and others even tried to link the Benghazi “scandal” to the sex life of Gen. David Petraeus. I kid you not.

Since Card makes such a point of comparing the media’s treatment of Obama to that of George W. Bush, we might remind ourselves, in case anyone forgot, that exactly 11 years before the Libya massacre, there was another terrorist attack against Americans – not on the other side of the world, but right on American soil. It didn’t kill 4 Americans, but a mere 3000 or so. And Bush, a Republican (which made him, according to Card and  many others, an object of media scorn) was in office then. His administration, unlike Obama’s, had received some very explicit warnings about the impending strike, but brushed them aside.

Now we must note here that most of the criticism of how Obama handled Benghazi (and even some of the criticism about how Bush handled 9-11) can be attributed to a perception bias that is sometimes called creeping determinism. Which is a fancy way of saying that when we’re armed with hindsight, past events often seem much more predictable than they actually were when we were armed only with foresight. Even so, one might make a case that Bush’s lack of preparation was impeachably negligent, depending on how much “noise” (i.e., similar warnings that proved false) he’d had to filter out.

His handling of the attack after the fact was unmistakably less than stellar. When informed that a major terrorist strike against the U.S. was in progress, he didn’t do a goddamn thing for at least half an hour except pose for photos while Americans were roasting alive in Manhattan. His eventual “response” was to continue being chummy with Saudi Arabia (a brutal dictatorship that supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers, thank you very much) and instead launch an invasion (justified by fraudulent “evidence”) of another country that was ruled by one of bin Laden’s enemies. This action has resulted to date in the deaths of thousands of additional Americans, as well as untold thousands – quite possibly millions – of  Iraqi civilians. Not to mention a price tag in the billions. And if you want to talk about lies and cover-ups, the Bush administration lied at least 230 times about the conflict, and changed its story about the motive for invading at least 30 times.

Yet you never heard about any of this from the mainstream librulmedia until Michael Moore shone such a bright spotlight on it that some of them must have felt too embarrassed not to give it at least a cursory mention. There was little probing into the Bush family’s longstanding close relationship with the Saudi royal family, and it scarcely was deemed worth mentioning that both the Bush family and the bin Laden family had strong ties to The Carlyle Group, a significant U.S. Defense contractor. (But fear not, a few years later the same media cartel would go apeshit over Barack Obama’s passing acquaintance in the past with “terrorist” William Ayers.) The attitude of the mainstream media toward Bush was best summed up in the words of Dan Rather:

“Wherever he wants me to line up, tell me where.”

And line up they did, praising his brilliant “leadership” in a time of crisis, and his “courage” and “strength” and “resolve” in waging his “War on Terror” that probably encouraged more terror. Under the media’s prodding, Dubya was handed a second term, and achieved the highest presidential approval rating in the nation’s history — despite his having seized the office through nepotism, cronyism and election tampering.

Liberal bias, anyone?