Making Sense of America’s Bungled Response to Muslim Rage

RIZWAN TABASSUM/AFP/GettyImages

Making Sense of America’s Bungled Response to Muslim Rage

Daniel 11 isn’t the only Bible prophecy being fulfilled right now in the Middle East.

Over the past several years—and for good reason—we have constantly referred you to a prophecy in Daniel 11:40-43, an end-time prophecy that describes Iran’s aggressive and pushy foreign policy. We’ve also told you about the prophesied radicalization of Egypt, followed by Libya and Ethiopia.

In viewing America’s bungling response to Muslim rage over the past two weeks, another prophecy keeps coming to mind. In Isaiah 3:4, the prophet says “babes” will rule over our peoples in these latter days. Of course, God isn’t talking about actual adolescents occupying the White House. What He means is that the adults ruling our peoples today will lead like children.

Isaiah’s prophecy, like the one in Daniel 11, is being fulfilled before our eyes.

The day before Islamic radicals attacked the U.S. embassy in Egypt and murdered the American ambassador in Libya, the Washington Post revealed that during the course of his presidency, Barack Obama had skipped out on 56 percent of his daily intelligence briefings. According to the report, the president’s attendance was even less frequent in 2011 and 2012 than it was during the first two years of his presidency.

In other words, the deeper he gets into his presidency, the more his interest in foreign policy diminishes. That’s what we learned on September 10. The day after that, we have since learned, Ambassador Chris Stevens was visiting the terror-infested city of Benghazi, on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, with practically no security detail to protect him.

Amid the explosive events that followed this monumental lapse in security and intelligence, it’s easy to forget that the other big news on September 11, before we heard about Cairo and Benghazi, was President Obama’s refusal to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he travels to America next week.

At first, the White House responded to the backlash of criticism by saying Israel never requested a meeting. Then it revised its position, saying President Obama couldn’t meet with Netanyahu because of a “scheduling conflict.”

Israeli officials fired back by saying Israel had requested a meeting in New York and suggested the prime minister could also meet the president in Washington. America’s most dependable ally in the Middle East was basically accusing the White House of lying.

At about this same time, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney blasted the Obama administration for its “disgraceful” response to the attacks in Cairo and Benghazi. While under attack, remember, Embassy Cairo had tweeted several statements that expressed sympathy for the Salafist mob that was outside the compound desecrating the U.S. flag.

Those embassy comments were later deleted after news broke about the deadly attack that followed in Benghazi. The Obama administration tried to distance itself from the embarrassing tweets by saying the statements hadn’t been cleared by the White House and did not reflect the views of the U.S. government. But this was hardly the first time a U.S. embassy had issued a statement condemning those who would offend Islam. In 2010, for example, after an unknown Florida pastor made a few headlines for burning Korans, the U.S. embassy in Pakistan expressed deep concern about the “deliberate attempts” of some who would “offend members of any religious or ethnic group.”

Before Chris Stevens was murdered, in fact, it had been standard protocol for the Obama administration, including its embassies around the world, to routinely apologize for offending Muslims. But after widespread outrage in the U.S. over the government’s feeble response to last week’s terrorist attacks, the White House immediately threw its Cairo Embassy under the bus and walked away.

This, however, didn’t stop the administration from continuing its policy of sympathizing with extremists, even justifying their anti-American violence. The violence was not a response to U.S. policy, the Obama administration or the American people, said White House press secretary Jay Carney. “It is in response to a video,” he said last Friday.

While he was saying that, anti-American violence was erupting all over the world. In Tunisia, Islamist protesters scaled the wall of the U.S. embassy compound, broke windows, started fires and raised the black flag of Al Qaeda over the embassy. In Sudan, a mob of 5,000 protesters marched right by Sudanese policemen and set the German Embassy on fire. In Lebanon, one person was killed, two wounded and a restaurant was set on fire during protests that coincided with Pope Benedict’s visit. In Yemen, the United States dispatched Marine reinforcements to fend off attacks. In London, 200 protesters burned American and Israeli flags outside the U.S. Embassy. And in Sydney, Muslim protesters were waving signs that read, “Behead all those who insult the prophet.”

The United States was under attack. And many news outlets even predicted the violent escalation ahead of time because when tensions are riding high in the world of Islam, the jihadists among them tend to riot after they leave their Friday worship services.

Yet, despite the prospect of widespread protests last Friday, it was business as usual in the Oval Office. President Obama met with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams on the South Lawn, was interviewed by an entertainment magazine, participated in a photo shoot with a Spanish photographer and attended a campaign fundraising dinner that night. Meanwhile, his spokesman was desperately trying to convince Americans that these attacks were merely spontaneous demonstrations that had nothing at all to do with anti-Americanism.

Many Americans knew they were being lied to. They wanted answers. Who was responsible for the Benghazi attack? How did Libyan “protestors” obtain such a deadly arsenal of high-grade weapons? And why was security detail around Ambassador Stevens practically non-existent?

The State Department responded to these many questions and concerns by essentially telling reporters to stop asking questions!

Then there was the embarrassment on Sunday, when Libyan President Mohamed Yousef told cbs’s Face the Nation that he had “no doubt” that it was a terrorist attack in Benghazi and that it had been planned ahead of time.

That same hour, on abc’s This Week, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told Jake Tapper that the attack was not premeditated. It was a “spontaneous” protest that was inspired by the violence in Cairo—which, of course, happened because of the video. The Benghazi “protest” was then “hijacked” by “clusters of extremists” and the whole thing just sort of “evolved” from there, Rice said.

On Tuesday, President Obama flew to New York for an interview with comedian David Letterman and to attend a ritzy fundraising event with hip-hop artists Beyonce and Jay-Z. In Washington, Jay Carney attempted to clarify the administration’s evolving position about Benghazi. Carney said the video was still the “precipitating factor” in all of the violent activity, but all the evidence had not yet been collected.

“I am not, unlike some others, going to prejudge the outcome of an investigation and categorically assert one way or the other what the motivations are or what happened exactly until that investigation is complete,” Carney said four days after he had categorically asserted that the video was solely to blame.

Yesterday, 10 days after Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were murdered, the Obama administration finally admitted it was a terrorist attack—sort of.

“It is, I think, self evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack,” Jay Carney said.

Last night, however, President Obama dialed that back several notches, saying the video was definitely used as an excuse for violence and that the investigation was still ongoing.

Meanwhile, evidence confirming what should have been self-evident 10 days ago is piling high. The attack in Benghazi was a premeditated strike on an ambassador who had been specifically targeted by Al Qaeda, cnn confirms. In fact, cbs News is now reporting that there wasn’t even an anti-American protest outside the Benghazi consulate on September 11. No hijacking. Just a 400-man army that attacked the U.S. consulate with high-grade weaponry.

cbs also says it is clear that the American public will not receive a detailed account of what happened in Benghazi until after the U.S. presidential election in November.

In the meantime, the pace of prophetic events will continue to accelerate. All across the Middle East, you see neon signs of America’s full-scale retreat. We took out Saddam and handed Iraq to Iran. Afghanistan will be served up next. We left Iranian protestors high and dry during the Green Revolution and then made the tragic mistake of enabling Islamic uprisings in Egypt and Libya. And we’ve totally abandoned Israel—the only Mideast nation, by the way, where there never seems to be any protests outside the U.S. Embassy.

As Charles Krauthammer recently said, the jihadists in the region are saying, “This is our time.”

And it is their time. Daniel 11:40-43 confirms it. But it’s all happening so incredibly fast because of another prophecy that highlights how naïve and childish America’s leadership would be in these latter days.