American history is not the only subject that confuses GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. The routinely revisionist congresswoman from Minnesota still cannot quite get her brain around the pro-democracy Middle East freedom movement, known as the Arab Spring.
Despite dictators being toppled in Tunesia, Egypt and Libya (Iraq, as well, albeit at a questionable cost in American lives and treasure), Bachmann condemned the Arab Spring, blaming President Obama for the popular uprisings, led by essentially enslaved peoples who seek the same freedoms enjoyed in Europe, North America and Israel.
"You want to know why we have an Arab Spring? Barack Obama has laid the table for an Arab Spring by demonstrating weakness from the United States of America," Bachmann said at a fundraiser today.
"The number one duty of the President is to be the commander-in-chief," she told supporters at Troutman's barbecue joint in Concord, N.C.
It was not the first time Bachmann butchered the facts about the Arab Spring, but she did meander into new territory when she sought to link ex-President Jimmy Carter's handling of the Islamic uprising in Iran in the late 1970s to Obama's handling of the Arab revolutions, according to MSNBC, which broke the story.
(MSNBC has the video of Bachmann's remarks here).
Bachmann further demonstrated that she has scant understanding of the widely accepted and long-held baseline negotiating point between Israel and the Palestinians -- that talks begin with both sides agreeing to the pre-1967 War border and move toward realistic land swaps from there.
"We saw him put a lot of daylight between our relationship with our ally Israel and when he called upon Israel to retreat to its indefensible 1967 borders. Don't think that message wasn't lost on Israel's 26 indefensible neighbors," Bachmann said.
Her comments came a week after Obama was criticized for one of the most pro-Israel addresses to the United Nations by a U.S. President.
On the upside, it is worth noting that Bachmann made the comments in Concord, North Carolina, so it could have been worse -- she could have suggested the American Revolution began there, as she did when she was in New Hampshire, whose capital is Concord.
All of Massachusetts can rejoice.
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