Republican wrong to politicize tragedy

From New York Daily news

U.S. Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney makes remarks on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, in Jacksonville, Florida September 12, 2012

Now he takes a beating on Libya.

All things foreign seem foreign to Mitt Romney.

He says he’ll save the American economy while banking in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. He says he’ll create American jobs as his company Bain Capital outsources jobs to China. He insults the Brits during the Olympics. He denigrates the Palestinian people as culturally inferior on a trip to Israel. He fails to even mention 190,000 American troops serving in Afghanistan at his convention speech. He still calls Russia “the Soviet Union” and labels it as America’s No. 1 enemy.

If John Kerry was right when he said at the Democratic Convention the “last time Romney saw Russia was in ‘Rocky 4,'” then the only thing he knows about Libya comes from watching Sasha Baron Cohen’s “The Dictator.”

Now it’s Romney’s Libya gaffe on the anniversary of 9/11.

On Sept. 11, as the nation mourned the heroes and victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as non-partisan Americans, with all name-calling between the Obama and Romney camps on hiatus for one mournful day, U.S. Ambassador to Libya John Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed by religious fanatics who stormed the American consulate in Benghazi with grenade launchers and machine guns.

These savages were incited to murder because some fanatical Islamic cleric cited some obscure film made by an even more anonymous American filmmaker that had about as much chance of being released as the last 10 years of Romney’s tax returns.

Several hours before the murders, as anti-American protests swelled, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo condemned “the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”

A lame statement to be sure.

But the White House quickly said they never approved that statement, claiming, “It doesn’t reflect the views of the U.S. government.”

Then all hell broke loose and four Americans were murdered in Benghazi.

But by 10 p.m. Boston time, before the last beacon of light dimmed at Ground Zero, before Taps had finished echoing through Lower Manhattan, before the last grieving family member had gone to bed on a politics- and politician-free 9/11 commemoration, Romney headquarters issued an embargoed statement to the media on the barbaric attacks.

The campaign okayed its release at 12:01 a.m. Sept. 12.

“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi,” Romney said. “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

Awful.

Political, exploitative, opportunistic.

As Rudy Giuliani learned when he ran for President the American people do not like politicians trying to exploit political mileage from the blood of our dead.

In boxing, a reckless roundhouse punch like Romney’s is the mark of a desperate “amacha” reeling on the ropes after Obama scored a five-point post-convention bump in the polls.

Romney’s Libyan punch missed by a mile and as we bury more innocent Americans killed on Sept. 11, it leaves Romney open for the kind of counterpunch from which even the best fighters often don’t recover.
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