Benghazi: Progressives Rewrite History in Real Time

BY FRANK SALVATO – If there was ever a moment in time when the American people could collectively glean knowledge from a “teachable moment,” the Obama Administration’s handling of the al Qaeda-related attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya is surely one. From the moment the public became aware of what can only be perceived as an act of war, perpetrated at the hands of an enemy that has officially declared war on the United States and the West, the Obama Administration – Progressives one and all – have engaged in one of their favorite tactics of political opportunism: re-writing history. In this instance, they are doing it in real time; right in front of our faces.

From the moment US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice took to the airwaves to insist that the attacks that took the lives of a US Ambassador and three of his colleagues were, in fact, not a coordinated and planned terrorist assault of a US target of interest, but, rather, a “spontaneous” uprising turned violent, spurred by a third-rate video that literally no one had ever seen, the American people were being subjected to fact manipulation for political purposes. With an election coming up, a terrorist attack did not fit the Obama Campaign’s narrative that, “Osama bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is on the run.” If the al Qaeda was on the run on September 11, 2012, it was running forward, bayonets fixed, with death in their eyes.

But re-writing history is nothing new to the Progressive Movement. During the time of Woodrow Wilson, Progressives perfected the art of propaganda to such an extent that many in the fascist  movements of Europe – Hitler, the hierarchy of the Nazi Party and even Italy’s Mussolini – took notice; impressed at the effectiveness and results achieved by Wilson’s Administration.

In Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg writes:

“Under President Wilson, progressives perfected the art of government propaganda. Wilson appointed the journalist and former muckraker George Creel to head the Committee on Public Information (CPI), the first modern ministry for propaganda in the Western world. Thus empowered, Creel methodically assembled an army of nearly 100,000 ‘Four Minute Men,’ each trained by the CPI to deliver, at a moment’s notice, four-minute propaganda speeches at town meetings or any other public venues where they might be heard. In 1917–18 alone, these operatives delivered some 7.55 million speeches in 5,200 communities.

“In addition, the CPI produced – with taxpayer dollars – millions of posters, buttons, and pamphlets bearing pro-Wilson, Progressive messages. The CPI’s nearly 100 pamphlets were distributed to approximately 75 million people. ‘It was a fight for the minds of men, for the “conquest of their convictions,” and the battle line ran through every home in every country,’ Creel later recalled…

“The public-relations pioneer Edward Bernays learned the science of what he termed ‘the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses’ during his time on Creel’s committee.”

To that end, it could be argued that Barack Obama’s entire life story is a product of decades of propaganda perfection. From Dreams From My Father to The Audacity of Hope, Mr. Obama’s entire life’s story has been very carefully crafted to present a myth rather than a man; a story rather than a life; an illusion instead of a person; an idea rather than reality. But I digress…

With UN Ambassador Rice’s advancement of the narrative that it was a protest over an inconsequential and poorly made film that served at the genesis for the murders of Ambassador Stevens and his colleagues, the spin of a propaganda machine meant to protect the Obama presidency began. CIA talking points used in a briefing to Obama Administration officials by the Director of National Intelligence were revised no less than two times in less than 24-hours – from 231 words that included references to jihadists and al Qaeda to 91 words that completely expunged all reference to radical Islamist participation, planning or premeditation.

And then the propaganda machine began to hum. From Ambassador Rice to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to high-ranking officials at the Pentagon and CIA, to President Obama himself, the story – the talking points – were so succinctly crafted and choreographed that they could have been loaded into a teleprompter. Well-rehearsed and with authoritative style, each of these political operatives delivered the approved talking points text with conviction, insisting that they, too, were disgusted by the Islamophobic nature of the incendiary video. Mrs. Clinton even went so far as to look the father of slain former-Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods in the eye and say, “We will make sure the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”

Of course, the light of the truth is shining on the facts of this story thanks to many in the new media, talk radio and FOX News, three information outlets routinely lambasted as “bias” and “right-wing” by the Progressive Movement’s many “useful idiots,” both in the mainstream media and the special interest community. And those facts, as they present, depict a much different reality – a much more truthful accounting – of the circumstances surrounding the slaughter in Benghazi. Ambassador Stevens and his colleagues were abandoned; left to fend for themselves and die in a foreign land so that an election could be won.

An equally disturbing truth, albeit not as lethal, is the fact that many serving in the highest elected offices in the United States; the highest offices in the Executive Branch as well as the Legislative Branch, left these people to die because of their political aspirations; so emboldened by their total commitment to a socio-political ideology, so cripplingly devoted to attaining the power that only winning elections can afford, that they blatantly and freely deceive the American people, even about lethal attacks on our diplomats; deadly attacks against our country.

Perhaps even more disturbing is the very real fact that many, if not all, of the people who voted for Mr. Obama in 2012 were led to incorporate the “Obama Campaign Islamophobic film narrative” into their decisions at the ballot box.

The facts being what they are, it cannot be denied that the decision to deceive the American people, the decision to flagrantly lie to the American people – and, in fact, the decision to abandon four Americans as they fought for their very lives – was a decision based on a political motive. The CIA talking points on the slaughter in Benghazi were purposely and grotesquely altered in an effort to deceive the voting public into believing the deadly events of September 11, 2012, were inconsequential to the 2012 Presidential Election; that everything that could have been done to save the lives of four Americans in the service of their country was done; that the hellfire that rained down on Ambassador Christopher Stevens, US Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and former-Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods was the result of “common over-reactionary” violence associated with the hurt feelings of Islamofascists to which the Obama Administration had no recourse.

The decision to lie to the American people about the act of war that happened in Benghazi, Libya, on September 12, 2012, was made to mask the weak and conciliatory foreign policy of a president whose only real-life prerequisite experience for the highest office in the land was that of Chicago community organizer – not a constitutional scholar, not an exceptional legal mind, not a well-seasoned elected public servant, but a failed Chicago Progressive community organizer.

In the book, Fabian Freeway, Rose L. Martin explains the agenda mindset of the founders of the Fabian Socialist Movement, the very movement that would give birth to today’s Progressive Movement. Incidentally, among the founding members of this arrogant and totalitarian movement: George Bernard Shaw:

“From the outset, the nine young men and women who remained to found the Fabian Society had grandiose plans. Quite simply, they wanted to change the world through a species of propaganda termed ‘education,’ which would lead to political action. To a rather astonishing degree they have been successful…”

“Changing the world through a species of propaganda termed ‘education’.” Given the fact that the same people who lied to the American people about the slaughter in Benghazi are the very people in control of our public education system, I would have to say I have never read more chilling words.

When the people we elect to public office are caught lying there should be consequences; a price paid for the cost of the deception. Keeping in mind that the four Americans who died in the slaughter of Benghazi – whose last moments on this earth must have been hopelessly tormenting – have already paid the ultimate price in the service of their country, it is fair to say that, so far, the only price Mr. Obama has been made to pay for his deadly political opportunism is to be re-elected to the Presidency on the wings of a lie.

I’m sure he’ll lose sleep over it.

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