Writing in The Federalist, Sean Davis says that President Obama is our own “Baghdad Bob,” nothing but a propaganda minister at the end of the day, desperately clinging to the narrative he was re-elected on.
Unfortunately for Americans, Baghdad Bob was a tool of Saddam, he wasn’t President of the United States. “Bagdhad Barack” is though…
Here is an excerpt:
“In other words, the 44th American president is now our very own Baghdad Bob. He is a man clinging so desperately to his narrative–terrorists are on the run because I ended the war in Iraq and killed bin Laden–that no amount of facts or evidence could possibly convince him his narrative might be wrong, even as that narrative is unraveling in real-time before his very eyes:
“In March of 2003, Saddam’s Minister of Information was everybody’s favorite inadvertent comedian. Sporting a kicky black beret and delightfully bombastic lexicon, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf appeared on TV daily to predict American failure and deny the Baghdad invasion–sometimes even as U.S. tanks appeared behind him. “He’s great,” President George W. Bush said of Sahaf, admitting that he occasionally interrupted meetings to watch Sahaf’s briefings. “Someone accused us of hiring him and putting him there. He was a classic.”
Sahaf became the subject of T-shirts, mugs, adoring websites, a pop song, and an action figure. Besides adding levity to news cycles otherwise filled with fuzzy green explosions, Sahaf represented everything that made Iraq’s invasion seem not quite like a real war. Wars are serious, and this guy was adorable. Even if you opposed the Iraq invasion, you had to admit it’s hard to respect a government whose official mouthpiece told a reporter, “Shock and awe? It seems that we are the awe on them. They are suffering from the shock and awe, okay?”
We all laughed at Baghdad Bob at the time, because what kind of delusional apparatchik would declare that there are no America tanks in Baghdad when American tanks can be seen in the background rolling through Baghdad? Baghdad Bob was funny, because Baghdad Bob was not in charge of protecting us. He was in charge of protecting Saddam Hussein.
But when your own president engages in the same absurd behavior–declaring that ISIS is contained while the group was planning a devastating attack in Paris that it would launch the very next day, or declaring that America is safe from the terrorist threat of ISIS while a terrorist who had pledged allegiance to ISIS was on the run from police after assisting in the execution of at least 14 completely innocent people at an office party in California–it’s not even remotely amusing. It’s terrifying.”
