Posted: 15 Sep 2013 08:37 PM PDT
Last September, Barack
Obama addressed the United Nations General Assembly to denounce a YouTube
video, calling it "crude and disgusting" and assuring Muslims
everywhere that this particular YouTube video did not represent America.
Finally
Obama delivered what is surely one of the most famous YouTube negative video
comments ever, "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet
of Islam."
The future is still up for grabs, but the man behind the YouTube video was
taken in by a crowd of armed police and locked up earning him the privilege
of being one of the few movie producers imprisoned for their movies;
alongside Robert Goldstein of "The Spirit of '76".
As YouTube thumbs downs go, a year in jail is pretty harsh. The thumbs of
American presidents historically lacked the thumbpotence of Roman emperors
sitting in their Coliseum boxes and deciding if a gladiator should live or
die. But when a YouTube video is passed off as the biggest national security
threat since a Twitter hashtag about Biden's hairplugs, why shouldn't Obama
take on imperial airs and drop the prison banhammer?
The trailer for a movie about the Muslim persecution of Christians did not
actually lead to multiple coordinated attacks by Salafists against American
embassies and diplomatic missions.
Unfortunately in an election where the incumbent was running on his claim
that he had single-handedly killed Osama bin Laden in an arm wrestling match,
it would have been embarrassing to admit that Al Qaeda had pulled off its
second worst attack on America since September 11... on September 11.
It was easier to blame it on YouTube.
Last September, a YouTube video was blamed for several acts of war. This
September, a war may be fought over a bunch of YouTube videos.
Obama addressed the nation to rally support for his Syrian strikes. As
evidence that "chemical weapons were used in Syria" he mentioned
the "videos, cell phone pictures, and social media accounts from the
attack".
The message was that if you want Obama's case for war, go watch it on
YouTube. And hope it isn't as staged as Jimmy Kimmel's Twerking fail video..
William Randolph Hearst was supposed to have told a reporter, "You
furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war". Now YouTube and social
media furnishes the videos and pictures and Barack Hussein Obama will furnish
the war.
Obama didn't even bother assembling a playlist of the top 10 WMD YouTube videos
that will make a case for war; a strange omission for an administration that
prides itself as the most tech-savvy organization in the room when it comes
to emailing voters and reading their email.
Instead officials boasted about their high-end YouTube watching skills and
their "Classified intelligence tools... used to ensure that bodies were
not counted twice." Hopefully at least one of those classified tools
involved basic arithmetic.
Traditionally a case for war would be based on some kind of physical
evidence, but in this new digital world where no one ever has to do anything
in person, except get treated for carpal tunnel syndrome, we can blame wars
on YouTube videos and fight wars over YouTube videos.
And if the whole Syrian chemical attack turns out to have been faked by Jimmy
Kimmel, at least it will have been the most epic troll ever leading to a
flame war with actual flames.
It's easy to blame Obama for being too lazy to send someone out
to Syria to actually check the toe tags instead of clicking through a few
videos, marking the WMD box checked and then checking out the trailer for the
remake of Robocop.
But it's not like anyone else has been doing a much better job.
French intelligence released a report confirming a chemical weapons attack by
Assad that killed 281 people based in part "on dozens of videos culled
by French intelligence services".
Forget James Bond. Jacques Bond dispenses with the tuxedo, martinis and the
Walther PPK and equipped with a Snuggie, a swivel chair and some Hot Pockets
assembles a case for war based on his unique skill of video cullings. It
really is the ultimate playlist with Europe's The Final Countdown as the
soundtrack. Or maybe Iggy Pop's Search and Destroy.
When Assad said that the accusations are based "on arbitrary videos
posted on the Internet", he kind of had a point. Or maybe he didn't.
After all they're based on arbitrary videos posted on the internet and then
culled by the crack Le Hot Pockets team at French intelligence and the best
YouTube watchers our own intelligence services have to offer.
It's easy to get confused when building a case for war based on YouTube
videos.
France's Top Secret YouTubers claimed 281 people had been killed. Our own
YouTubers appear to have come up with 1,429 since that's the number that John
Kerry has been waving around on any channel willing to give him 5 minutes of
airtime.
But maybe our YouTubers just watched the same video 5 times.
Across the channel, UK's social media spooks claimed 350 dead. Maybe they
watched the full video. Doctors Without Borders, which hopefully counted
actual bodies instead of URLs, pegged the death toll at 355. The Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights went up to 502. Even that is only 1/3 of Kerry's
1,429.
Where does Kerry get his oddly specific 1,429 number from? No one knows.
The Senate Intelligence Committee received 13 videos whose authenticity was
verified by that specter known as "the intelligence community". The
intelligence community is a notoriously flexible entity. It usually knows the
truth, but sometimes serves other masters.
Back when Obama was determined to blame a movie trailer for the murder of
four Americans, the intelligence community, which originally pointed to a
terrorist attack, was muscled by Hillary's people into blaming the dreaded
YouTube video in the Benghazi talking points.
Online videos don't make the best case for war. It's not just Jimmy Kimmel
who can fake viral videos.
Both sides in the Syrian Civil War have filled the internet with viral videos
claiming to show the other side using chemical weapons, killing babies and
eating with their left hands. There's a fake suicide bomber auction video
being distributed by the regime and a fake government massacre being passed
around by the rebels. And those are just some of the more notorious examples.
The pro-regime Syrian Electronic Army is hacking websites and the Syria
expert whose Wall Street Journal article claiming that the Syrian rebels were
moderate was cited by McCain and Kerry turned out to have faked her academic
credentials while working for a Syrian rebel front group.
The best thing to believe about Syria is nothing. Both sides are engaged in
epic levels of fakery. And if we are going to bomb Syria, the least we can do
is sort through real life evidence.
Obama may begin wars over YouTube videos and blame wars on YouTube videos,
but the people who die in those wars are all too real. In his UN General
Assembly speech, he mentioned the video seven times, but never once mentioned
the names of the two former Navy SEALS who rushed to the rescue.
If the future is to belong to anyone, it should belong to men like them and
not to amateur YouTube reviewers who start wars.
Those who live in a virtual world, often forget that the things that matter
are real. Wars aren't really virtual; even if they're fought with drones and
reported on by Twitter accounts. The people who die in them are real and the
money used to wage them has to be taken out of the monthly paychecks of
families struggling to pay for winter clothing, braces and a home cooked
meal.
Obama, like Hollande and Cameron, his leading Syrian War allies, slashed
military spending while starting new wars. He cut military paychecks and
raised the cost of military healthcare while drastically slashing the armed
forces. In a debate, he sneered that objections to his policy of gutting the
Navy while expecting it to fight all his wars for him were like so retro.
"We have fewer ships than we did... we also have fewer horses and
bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed," Obama said. The
line quickly became a trending Twitter hashtag and inspired YouTube videos;
none of which, fortunately, led to jail sentences.
But now it’s not hashtags or YouTube videos steaming toward Syria; it’s Navy
ships with not enough of the cruise missiles that Obama would like to fire
off. And so the bayonets may have to do.
YouTube videos are great for streaming Obama’s war speeches and finding
scapegoats for the terrorist attacks he wants to deny happened, but they
don't fight wars.
Men
like Glenn Doherty and Tyrone Woods, who died not because of a YouTube video,
but because Obama failed to provide them with armed support while they were
fighting for their lives, are the ones that fight them. And they fight with
whatever is left to them by a government that tried to blow $250,000 on an
Afghan YouTube channel, but didn’t have enough left over to provide security
for American diplomats or health care for American soldiers.
Obama is a virtual leader for a virtual nation. He has virtual solutions for
all problems, none of which actually work in the real world. He can virtually
do anything, but he can't really do anything except spend fortunes on useless
boondoggles in proper Silicon Valley style. Like so many dot coms, he thinks
that inspiration is a substitute for a business plan and communications and
social media outreach are a substitute for a strategy. They aren't.
Like so many Silicon Valley dot coms with a huge audience and no profits to
show for it, he has gotten away with it because too many are invested in the
virtual pyramids of the Arab Spring, along with his other pyramid schemes, to
hold him accountable.
But his Syria speech is only another reminder that he doesn't have a plan for
the war. He has a video.
Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger
and a Shillman Journalism Fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
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