O RLY?
Wednesday, while speaking at a White House Conference on countering violent extremism, Obama claimed, “Islam has been woven into the fabric of our country since its founding.”
“Generations of Muslim immigrants came here and went to work as farmers and merchants and factory workers, helped to lay railroads and to build up America. The first Islamic center was founded in the 1890s. America’s first mosque, this is an interesting fact, was in North Dakota.”
As CNS News points out, this is not the first time Obama has made this fictitious claim:
“I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story,” Obama said in a June 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt. “Islam has always been part of America,” he said in a 2010 statement marking the start of Ramadan. And in a 2014 statement marking Eid, Obama said the holiday “also reminds us of the many achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy.”
If by being forced to create a navy and fight two wars against Muslim pirates and privateers, then Obama’s version of history might be sort of accurate, otherwise, I have no clue where this man gets his history. John Adams created a standing navy to deal with Muslim pirates (or Barbary Corsairs). Thomas Jefferson had to go to war (First Barbary War) when he refused to pay tribute to the Barbary Corsairs who were kidnapping merchant marines for ransom and seizing American merchant ships. James Madison was at the helm for Second Barbary War in 1815. But maybe they don’t teach that stuff at ivy league schools.
I’m offended by very little President Obama does or says because I expect him to do and say the things he does and says; that whole managing expectations thing. Although when he said Republicans should sit in the back of the bus, I was fit to be tied. Similarly, deliberately false historical statements have a way of making my blood boil.
“All politicians lie!” True. But fudging legislative or personal history facts is quite different from actually rewriting history.
Fabricating facts to sell junk legislation is as old a practice as politics itself, and most politicians engage in colorful exaggerations to some degree. They are projecting and predicting what voters want to hear the best case scenario in order to sell their product to the public. Lies told in pursuit of legislative or re-election success carry some amount of accountability though. Take a look at Democratic Senators who voted for Obamacare, for instance. Those that peddled the health care nightmare lost their seats when promises went unfulfilled.
No such culpability is available to a President who concocts and entirely different version of history than what actually transpired. Not to mention the hubris it takes to have as part of historical record, the fact that one consistently mucks up verifiable fact.
That Obama’s version of history is meant to soften a brutally, violent history of an ideological adversary we are currently warring is merely the icing on the fib cake. Paul Hamilton summed up the issue of decorum perfectly, “I could see FDR trying to make this point about the Germans during WWII because Baron von Steuben was a hero of Valley Forge… but FDR wouldn’t have; because WWII was a war not a public relations effort.”
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