Jophiel wrote:
However, I'm curious. You insist that Romney wasn't targeting Obama himself with his statements of disgraceful sympathizers but you haven't said WHO exactly the disgraceful sympathizers are.
First off, let's stop calling them "sympathizers". That word has a whole extra connotation that is not present in Romney's statement.
Secondly, let's stop playing games with tense. Since all the events at the time were past tense, Romney's statement is past tense. But two things which both occurred in the past did not necessarily happen at the same time. You (and a lot of other people apparently) are interpreting Romney's statement that "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.†as though the administration sympathized with the attacks themselves. But his statement doesn't say that. It simply says that they sympathized (past tense) with those who waged the attacks (also past tense).
The attacks happened after the sympathy. If a man feeds his dog, and then later the dog bites him, it would be perfectly correct to say after the fact that the man fed the dog who bit him. If you give a hitchhiker a ride downtown and that guy later robs a bank, it would be correct for someone (also after the fact) to say that you gave a ride to the man who robbed the bank. If the US gives foreign aid to a country and that country later engaged in an attack on us, we would also be correct to say that we gave aid to the same country that attacked us. In all cases, we're pointing out something bad someone (or a dog in the first case) did despite us doing something presumably beneficial to them before hand.
See how that works? Just want to clarify that since it seems like some people are getting confused about the order of things and thus what Romney was talking about.
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It's not enough to just say "the administration". "The administration" is made up of people.
It's a label Joph. So is "the Obama administration". If we're both talking about the same thing, we're talking about the same thing. Did you think there was some other administration in charge of our embassies involved here? You can't possibly be seriously arguing that by including Obama's name in the phrase this somehow makes it more an attack on Obama?
It's his administration. He sets the policy. He's responsible for that policy. What part of this is confusing you?
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We know where the statement, and later Tweet, originated from so is Romney calling the people of the US embassy in Cairo disgraceful sympathizers?
No. He's saying that it's disgraceful that their first response was to sympathize with those who waged the attacks. It's right there in the quote. Are you unable to understand plain English. He's not saying they sympathized
with the attacks but with those who waged them. And he's exactly correct. The approach was to attempt to appease the angry mob by taking their side on the whole video issue. Obviously, it failed miserably, but more to the point it's not in keeping with the principles and presumed policy of the US.
If it were in keeping with those principles, the Obama administration would not have later disavowed the statement(s). Get it? I thought I already explained this to you like twice now.
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And do you support Romney's opinion of them?
Of them? Why do you have to make it personal Joph? I support Romney's opinion of their actions with regard to the statements in question. And what's funny is that so does Obama. So what are you complaining about? If Obama wanted to argue that what Romney said was wrong, he could have stood by the statements that Romney was attacking. But he not only didn't, but disavowed them himself (well, his press folks did anyway). So Romney and Obama both agree that those statements were not in line with the policies and principles of the United States.
So what is your beef exactly? You seem to want to blame Romney for saying something which Obama agrees with. Why aren't you criticizing Obama for not standing by his embassy personnel and their statements if you really feel so strongly about this?
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And if he's not saying it about Obama and he's not saying it about the people who issued the statement, then WHO exactly is the disgraceful sympathizer Romney is attacking?
Huh? You're not even making sense anymore. You're like a broken record at this point. Get back to me when you can ask an intelligent question. He's saying it about the embassy personnel who wrote the damn messages. Those people are part of the Obama administration. I'll ask again: what part of this is confusing for you. He never said it came from Obama himself. He said it came from the Obama administration.
You're going to great lengths to twist the words around in order to make a pretty weak point. How about you not do that and just take the message for what it meant: That the statements being made by the embassy personnel were disgraceful. They basically took the side of the angry mob in opposition to our own first amendment. I'm sorry, but that's a big deal and Romney was absolutely correct to point it out.
I'll ask for the third time: Do you believe that if Romney (or someone) hadn't made a big deal about this that the White House would have disavowed the statements. Or would they have just ignored it and hoped no one noticed that one of their embassies basically just told the Muslim world that we reject the use (abuse is the word they used IIRC) of freedom of speech which might involve things which Muslims view negatively (like burning a Koran). Do you think that's in line with the official position the US has towards freedom of speech? Cause if it is, you and I have a completely different opinion of the first amendment.