White House Denies Islamic Protests Are Reaction to Obama's Foreign Policy

Fox News broadcast the entire return ceremony earlier at the Dover Airbase. I felt deep sadness. But I was also shocked at Hillary Clinton's comments. She said that the protests were exclusively a response to the inflammatory "Innocence of Muslims" film, and were thus not directed against U.S. policy at all, or against the American people. All those burned American flags say otherwise, not to mention all the rage we're now seeing from Cairo to Khartoum. The video has snippets from the speeches today, but see the full transcript of Secretary Clinton's comments, "Remarks at the Transfer of Remains Ceremony to Honor Those Lost in Attacks in Benghazi, Libya":

This has been a difficult week for the State Department and for our country. We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing to do with. It is hard for the American people to make sense of that because it is senseless, and it is totally unacceptable.

The people of Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Tunisia did not trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of a mob. Reasonable people and responsible leaders in these countries need to do everything they can to restore security and hold accountable those behind these violent acts. And we will, under the President’s leadership, keep taking steps to protect our personnel around the world.

There will be more difficult days ahead, but it is important that we don’t lose sight of the fundamental fact that America must keep leading the world. We owe it to those four men to continue the long, hard work of diplomacy. I am enormously proud of the men and women of the State Department. I’m proud of all those across our government, civilian and military alike, who represent America abroad. They help make the United States the greatest force for peace, progress, and human dignity the world has ever known. If the last few days teach us anything, let it be this: That this work and the men and women who risk their lives to do it are at the heart of what makes America great and good.

The key part is highlighted. The protests are allegedly a response to a video that "we had nothing to do with," which is a way to absolve the administration of any pent up anger at its policies, or any generalized anti-Americanism that Obama's policies have failed to assuage, despite the president's shameful Islamic appeasement, beginning with the stupid Cairo apology speech in 2009.

But even worse is White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, who claims that the protests were exclusively a "reaction to a video" and "not a reaction to 9/11 or US policy." See PJ Media, "Shocking Video: WH Spox Jay Carney Says Attacks are Reaction to Film, Not US Policy, and Were Not Pre-Planned." And also the Washington Times, "White House calls report ‘absolutely false,’ was not warned about Cairo attack: Says Middle East protests are against film, not Obama’s policies."

And Alana Goodman nails it, at Commentary, "Carney: Anti-Islam Video Completely to Blame for ‘Unrest’":

Even if the video fueled the protests, how did a low-budget Youtube film that nobody had heard of before last week get dubbed into Arabic and distributed around Muslim countries? The answer is fanatical Islamist leaders who used the film to incite outrage on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

And if you believe the video was the sole drive behind the protests, then why were U.S. flags replaced with the flags of al-Qaeda? Why were terrorists groups reportedly involved in organizing the protests weeks in advance — before the film even came to light?

The Obama administration does not want to talk about terrorism, because it wants to pretend it defeated terrorism by killing Osama bin Laden. They don’t want to mention al-Qaeda, unless of course it’s in the context of a drone our military dropped on one of its leaders. But as the embassy attacks illustrate, the Islamic terror threat has not disappeared. It hasn’t been vanquished by the lofty speeches of a Nobel Peace Prize-winning president, or eradicated by his policy of covert assassinations. The fact that the White House hasn’t seemed to grasp this is what made today’s briefing so tone-deaf, and so startling.

RELATED: At the New York Times reports, "Somber Ceremony as Bodies of Slain Americans Return."