Scott St. Clair: A U.S. President Goes Out of His Way to Make a Failure of History Repeat Itself

Wait, wait, wait...Back on September 6, 2012 didn't President Obama say al Qaeda was on the run only to have that statement followed six days later by a successful al Qaeda attack on an American facility in Libya resulting in the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others? And a few days ago, didn't an al Qaeda-linked group kidnap a couple dozen oil-field workers in Algeria, several of whom were Americans, most all of whom are now dead? What about what's now happening in the African country of Mali, where the French are waging war against al Qaeda-affiliated groups in a land mass the size of Texas? 

Yet yesterday during his inaugural address, President Obama lifts one of the most repudiated and wrong lines from 20th Century history when he quotes then-British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and promises "Peace in our time" just as Chamberlain did after the disgraceful sellout of Czechoslovakia at Munich in 1938. (In the video of the Inaugural Address, start at about 14:50)

At the same time President Obama was saying that 10 years of war was over and "Peace in our time" is on the horizon, wasn't outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta saying the U.S. must "fight back" against al Qaeda whenever and wherever? Was that Panetta's way of giving the president the political finger on the way out the door? Johnny Paycheck would be proud.



What? Why then do these guys complain about Republicans not genuflecting to His Majesty when the Obama administration can't get its own story straight? Even the most die-hard Obama supporter HAS to be mortified at the president's choice of language and complete disregard of both history and current events. I'd laugh except too many have died as a result of the bungling.