Allen West: Apologizing in Egypt is “rewarding bad behavior”

This was before the press conferences from both Romney and the President this morning and the ensuing fallout, but I thought Rep. Allen West‘s reaction last night to the U.S. embassy’s apology to rioters in Egypt was, like Krauthammer‘s, right on point.

I think it’s an absolutely horrible thing, because what you have to understand — here we are on 9/11, remembering the attacks… and now we have had another attack on sovereign American soil, which is what a consulate and an embassy is. Our flag was torn down, it was burned, the radical Islamists’ flag was raised, and we have an American official that lost their life. And the first thing that comes out is that we’re going to apologize for something that a Christian, Coptic individual posted in a video on his Facebook site. So now, if we’re going to start eschewing our freedom of speech rights to apologize to people for these type of attacks, Greta, you’re only get even more of this. This is rewarding bad behavior, and I think you’re going to see this dovetail into other countries. … I think it’s a horrific response that we’re apologizing. We’re accepting the blame for this which means you’re going to feel more of this response. …

Spot-on. It is insane — insane – that we should feel the need to tiptoe around the tender feelings of violent, overzealous radical Islamists (or, as some in the MSM now seem to be oh-so-subtly calling them, “ultraconservative” Islamists — really, guys?). Freedom of religion and freedom of speech are human rights, and I don’t mean that like ‘universal healthcare’ is supposed to be a human right (which, by the way, it isn’t). They are undeniable, inalienable, universal rights — absolutely no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it — and for representatives of the United States to get all sheepish and showcase their willingness to be bullied on that point makes me extremely nervous, to say the least.

The big buzz all morning has been that Romney somehow miffed an opportunity to work on his foreign-policy credentials by issuing a premature or inappropriate statement on the riots in Egypt, but I’m not buying it. As Byron York writes:

An instant consensus appears to have developed among reporters and commentators that Mitt Romney made a mistake when he released a statement last night condemning the Obama administration’s response to attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt. …

But Romney was, and is, right.  As events in Benghazi and Cairo unfolded, the Obama administration’s first instinct was to apologize for any offense Muslims might have taken from an Internet video, made in America, that mocked and ridiculed the prophet Mohammed, and which the radicals cited as the cause for their actions. … Then, on Wednesday morning, Romney said the administration “was wrong to stand by a statement sympathizing with those who had breached our embassy in Egypt instead of condemning their actions.”

And that is exactly what the administration did. …

• Chuck Todd: The Obama administration is trying to “criminalize journalism”
• About those “doctored” Benghazi e-mails…
• White House word of the day – Irrelevant

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