Libyan Ambassador’s Father: It Would Really Be Abhorrent To Make This Into A Campaign Issue

From the day the news first broke about the attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Republicans and conservative media have sought to exploit the tragedy and manufacture a scandal. Within hours of the initial reports Mitt Romney held a press conference blaming President Obama. Romney’s rash and irresponsible statements alleged that the administration had apologized to terrorists following the death of an American ambassador, even though the only statements made by the administration or the State Department were in response to protests and were issued before the attacks.

In the weeks that followed, the right has been feverishly attempting to invent a controversy, rather than showing a concern for the victims of for the conduct of a thorough investigation with the intent of bringing the perpetrators to justice. Partisan members of congress have held hearings designed to inflame emotions and disparage the President. Meanwhile, the press, led by Fox News, has been pumping out incomplete stories and pointing fingers without any evidence to validate their allegations.

Today, the father of Christopher Stevens, the slain ambassador, was interviewed by Bloomberg News and expressed his objection to the politicization of his son’s death:

The father of Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya who was killed in the attack in Benghazi last month, said his son’s death shouldn’t be politicized in the presidential campaign.

“It would really be abhorrent to make this into a campaign issue,” Jan Stevens, 77, said in a telephone interview from his home in Loomis, California, as he prepares for a memorial service for his son next week.

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, has criticized President Barack Obama for not providing adequate security in Libya, saying the administration has left the country exposed to a deadly terrorist attack.

The ambassador’s father, a lawyer, said politicians should await the findings of a formal investigation before making accusations or judgments.

“The security matters are being adequately investigated,” Stevens said. “We don’t pretend to be experts in security. It has to be objectively examined. That’s where it belongs. It does not belong in the campaign arena.” Stevens said he has been getting briefings from the State Department on the progress of the investigation.

Mr. Stevens went on to say that he “felt very strongly about Secretary Clinton,” and that he “never heard [Chris] say a critical word about the State Department or the administration, or any administration for that matter. He came up through the foreign service, not politics.”

Nevertheless, leave it to Fox News to do the abhorrent thing. Throughout their broadcast day they have focused obsessively on this issue. Every program has heaped heavy doses of their speculative reporting – or should I say gossiping, because there has been little actual news content in their stories. What’s more, they have presented a determinedly one-sided exposition of events. Fox Nation has posted dozens of items that they sensationalize as Benghazi-Gate, a wholly inappropriate analogy.

Fox Nation Benghazi-gate

Fox is not shy about exploiting family members of victims when it serves their partisan purposes. When the mother of Navy SEAL Sean Smith made some critical remarks about how the affair was being handled, Fox jumped in to feature her in exclusive interviews to expand on those criticisms. Jeanine Pirro hosted Mrs. Smith on her program for an extended segment that featured allegations that she had been lied to by the administration, and pleas for the truth that she alleged was being withheld.

Fox News Pirro

Interestingly, Fox neglected to report that the mother of slain Navy SEAL Glen Doherty explicitly requested that Romney stop talking about her son in his stump speeches saying, “He shouldn’t make my son’s death part of his political agenda.” Likewise, Fox neglected to report on a close family friend of Doherty who refuted Romney’s tall tales about meeting Doherty at a neighborhood party. So it should come as no surprise that Fox has yet to note these new remarks by the ambassador’s father. Fox only thinks the feelings of friends and relatives are important when they reflect badly on the President.

It is indeed repulsive to see Romney and the GOP PR machine trying to score political points over this tragic event. Their biased presentation is obvious to any neutral observer. Every time they charge that Obama declined to give additional security to the embassies, they leave out the fact that the Republican congress voted to cut funding for such activities. They also leave out the facts that the additional security that was requested was only for the embassy in Tripoli, not the compound in Benghazi, and that the extra security would not have prevented attacks like those in Benghazi in any case.

While the legitimate investigation is continuing by reputable law enforcement authorities, the right should take the advice of the ambassador’s father and the SEAL’s mother. They should quite politicizing the deaths of Americans. It is a despicable act of insensitivity, selfishness, and disrespect for the victims and the process of justice. These people did not die to give Fox a cudgel with which beat the President or to give Romney a campaign attack line.

American Conservatives Who Still Think That Slavery Was A Good Thing

Right-Wing RacismFor obvious reasons, the American conservative movement has long been dogged by accusations of racism and racial insensitivity. From their famed Southern strategy to their determined efforts to suppress minority voting via phony voter ID initiatives to their race-baiting Obama attacks, conservatives have made clear their opposition to a tolerant, multicultural America. In fact, much of their electoral strategy relies on scaring older, white voters about blacks and Hispanics taking over “their” country.

It’s not uncommon to hear a prominent conservative, even one who holds elected office, make patently offensive remarks, yet some occasionally hit an unimaginable low. This week, it was revealed that Republican Rep. Jon Hubbard has published a book in which he wrote that “[T]he institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise.” He defended his book on Wednesday, telling the Jonesboro Sun that he still believed slavery to be a blessing because it helped blacks come to America. Yes, he praised slavery. And when given the opportunity to backpedal, he doubled down.

This article was also published on Alternet

You may think that this does not occur often. You would be wrong. Here are a few other prominent conservatives who have suggested slavery was not all that bad.

1) Pat Buchanan
In his essay “A Brief for Whitey,” Buchanan agreed that slavery was a net positive saying that, “America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.”

2 & 3) Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum
Bob Vander Plaats, the leader of the arch-conservative Family Leader, a religious organization that opposes same-sex marriage, got GOP presidential candidates Bachmann and Santorum to sign his pledge asserting that life for African-Americans was better during the era of slavery: “A child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”

4) Art Robinson
Robinson was a publisher and a GOP candidate for congress in Oregon. One of the books he published included this evaluation of life under slavery: “The negroes on a well-ordered estate, under kind masters, were probably a happier class of people than the laborers upon any estate in Europe.”

5) Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson
Peterson is a conservative preacher who articulated this bit of gratitude: “Thank God for slavery, because if not, the blacks who are here would have been stuck in Africa.”

6) David Horowitz
Horowitz is the president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and edits the ultra-conservative FrontPage Magazine. In a diatribe against reparations for slavery, Horowitz thought this argument celebrating the luxurious life of blacks in America would bolster his case: “If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves.”

7) Wes Riddle
Riddle was a GOP congressional candidate in Texas with some peculiar conspiracy theories on a variety of subjects. His appreciation for what slavery did for African-Americans was captured in this comment: “Are the descendants of slaves really worse off? Would Jesse Jackson be better off living in Uganda?”

8) Trent Franks
Franks is the sitting congressman for the 2nd congressional district in Arizona. As shown here, he believes that a comparison of the tribulations of African-Americans today to those of their ancestors in the Confederacy would favor a life in bondage: “Far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery.”

9) Ann Coulter
Known for her incendiary rhetoric and hate speech, Coulter was right in character telling Megyn Kelly of Fox News that, “The worst thing that was done to black people since slavery was the great society programs.”

10) Rep. Loy Mauch
This Arkansas GOP state legislator has found biblical support for his pro-slavery position. He wrote to the Democrat-Gazette to inquire, “If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn’t there a war before 1861?”

There is an almost palpable nostalgia amongst some conservatives for a bygone era wherein they could sip Mint Juleps under the Magnolias while the fields were tended to by unpaid lackeys. And it isn’t a vague insinuation. Mitt Romney supporter Ted Nugent declared explicitly that “I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War.” Allen West, the chairman of Romney’s Black Leadership Council, frequently portrays Democrats as plantation masters who want to enslave American citizens. And no one should regard it as a coincidence that so much of this racist animus has surfaced during the term of the first African-American president of the United States.

It’s one thing to harbor such offensive racial prejudices privately, but when people in public life are comfortable enough to openly express opinions like these, it reveals something of the character of their movement. And what’s worse is that conservative and Republican leaders, given the opportunity, refuse to repudiate the remarks. Mitt Romney has stated that all he’s concerned about is getting 50.1% of the vote, and if that means tolerating appeals to racist voters in order to attain his goal, then it’s just a part of the process. Conservatives often complain about being characterized as racists, but there’s a simple solution to that problem that would make it go away overnight: Stop being racist.