DOVER VISIT DRAWS MORE FIRE FROM THE FAR RIGHT…. First, it was Liz Cheney slamming President Obama for honoring fallen troops at Dover Air Force Base. Yesterday, it was Rush Limbaugh criticizing the president for being on hand as flag-draped coffins as they returned home.
Mr. Limbaugh criticized Mr. Obama’s trip as part of a broader attack on the president’s handling of Afghanistan and his credentials.
“It was a photo op precisely because he’s having big-time trouble on this whole Afghanistan dithering situation,” Mr. Limbaugh said on “Fox News Sunday.” … “I think he’s got an out-of-this-world ego. He’s very narcissistic. And he’s able to focus all attention on him all the time,” he said.
Right-wing leaders continue to find the strangest things to get upset about.
President Obama paid his respects to fallen U.S. soldiers. This doesn’t seem like an especially controversial thing to do. President Bush chose not to greet returning caskets during his two terms, and didn’t even want journalists to take photographs of the events, but nevertheless went out of his way to advertise private meetings with the families of the fallen. Was this “narcissistic,” too?
For that matter, when 16 Americans were killed in an attack on the U. S. Embassy in Beirut, then-President Reagan not only appeared at Andrews Air Force Base to greet the flag-draped coffins, he brought the First Lady and the media, and then talked about his appearance in a weekly radio address. Did that make it a “photo-op”?
The other day, digby summarized all of this nicely: “Any discussion that there’s something untoward in the President greeting dead soldiers is wingnut revisionist crap. Kings and leaders have been doing this since time began. It’s a sign of respect for the fallen and they do it publicly as gesture on behalf of the people. That these so-called patriots think there’s now something wrong with that tells you everything you need to know about their sincerity.”
