{"id":616,"date":"2012-10-17T22:16:17","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T02:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=616"},"modified":"2012-10-17T22:16:17","modified_gmt":"2012-10-18T02:16:17","slug":"people-died-and-obama-and-candy-crowley-lied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/10\/people-died-and-obama-and-candy-crowley-lied.html","title":{"rendered":"People Died and Obama (and Candy Crowley) Lied"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the second presidential debate, Barack Obama claimed that within hours of its occurrence, he referred to the September 11th<\/sup> attack on the American embassy inLibya as an \u201cact of terror.\u201d When Mitt Romney proceeded to challenge the President\u2019s veracity on this score, moderator Candy Crowley insisted that Obama was correct.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This brief exchange is now being treated as the single most important event of the evening.\u00a0 Today, Crowley is as much at the center of media attention, of controversy, as are Romney and Obama.<\/p>\n

Crowley and Obama are both correct that, within 24 hours or so of the murder of our ambassador and three others, the latter did indeed use the expression \u201cact of terror\u201d in connection with the Libya incident.\u00a0 From the Rose Garden, Obama said that \u201cno 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is fine and well.\u00a0 Every American can sleep just a bit easier knowing that the Obama administration will not tolerate acts of terror.\u00a0 But Mr. President, we were still left wondering, is this <\/em>act such an act? <\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Grammatically and logically, there is all of the difference between those propositions that are universal and those that are particular.\u00a0 Knowing a thing or two about all <\/em>acts of terror is not the same as knowing whether any particular act deserves to be treated as a member of that class. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Objectors will claim that even though he didn\u2019t explicitly identify the Libyan attack as an act of terror, given the context of Obama\u2019s remarks, it is clear that he implicitly described it as such.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The problem, though, with this line of reasoning, is that not only is it not clear <\/em>that this is what Obama did; the context makes it pretty clear that he did not<\/em> identify the Libyan attack an act of terror.<\/p>\n

An analogy may help here.\u00a0 As a college instructor, I give my students writing assignments. Now, suppose that one of my students, Bill, say, submits work that is suspiciously similar in wording to the work of another one of my students, say, Joe.\u00a0 It is possible that neither Bill nor Joe acted inappropriately, but it is also possible that they either plagiarized one another or a third person.<\/p>\n

Now, I stand before my students and indignantly declare: \u201cNo acts of plagiarism will ever shake the resolve of this great institution of higher learning, alter the character, or eclipse the light of the values that it stands for.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Given this context, all that an observer is justified in inferring is that I have zero tolerance for plagiarism and that I suspect that plagiarism may <\/em>have occurred.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No one would be justified in concluding that I hold either Bill or Joe to be a plagiarist.<\/p>\n

Similarly, all that the President\u2019s remarks established is that his administration has zero tolerance for acts of terror and that he recognizes the possibility <\/em>that the Libyan attack was an act of terror.<\/p>\n

They most decidedly do not establish that he was convinced that it was <\/em>an act of terror.<\/p>\n

There are other considerations that render Obama\u2019s andCrowley\u2019s claim even more suspect.<\/p>\n

For one, for a couple of weeks following the Libyan attack, the President\u2019s administration insisted that it was a \u201cspontaneous\u201d reaction to an amateurish \u201canti-Islam\u201d video made by some obscure American.\u00a0 This was the line regurgitated on multiple occasions by Obama\u2019s UN ambassador, Hillary Clinton, Jay Carney, and the President himself.\u00a0 In fact, when Obama addressed the world via the United Nations, he mentioned this video six times.\u00a0 He called the Libyan attack an act of terror not once.<\/p>\n

A spontaneous reaction, an uprising or revolt, is not an act of terror.\u00a0 The attack in Libya could be one or the other, but it cannot be both.\u00a0 Obama clearly made his choice before it was no longer possible for him to stick by it.<\/p>\n

But there is another consideration that may be lost upon commentators.<\/p>\n

The President has repeatedly castigated Romney for jumping to conclusions.\u00a0 Romney, he once said, tends to \u201cshoot first and aim later.\u201d\u00a0 Recall, Romney was excoriated by the left-wing media for pronouncing the Libya attack a terrorist attack shortly after it transpired.<\/p>\n

Yet if Obama beat Romney to the punch and called it a terrorist attack at roughly the same time, as he and Crowley now maintain, then, we are compelled to ask, didn\u2019t Obama shoot before aiming?\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t he be guilty of doing what he has been warning all of us against by drawing premature conclusions?<\/p>\n

Granted, this wouldn\u2019t be the first time that the President\u2019s preaching contradicted his practice.\u00a0 But in this case, I think the more likely explanation for such a glaring contradiction is that he simply isn\u2019t telling the truth when he said that he called out the Libya attack as an act of terror on September 12th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the second presidential debate, Barack Obama claimed that within hours of its occurrence, he referred to the September 11th attack on the American embassy inLibya as an \u201cact of terror.\u201d When Mitt Romney proceeded to challenge the President\u2019s veracity on this score, moderator Candy Crowley insisted that Obama was correct.\u00a0 This brief exchange is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nPeople Died and Obama (and Candy Crowley) Lied<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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