The plight of Americans abandoned in Yemen by the Obama administration is a gigantic national scandal, studiously ignored by the same media that invent various “outrages” to hit Republican presidential candidates with. Despite the lack of adequate coverage in the mainstream media, at least one journalist felt baffled enough by State Department tactics to ask just how Americans trapped in Yemen are expected to escape: “Swim?”
There might not be any Big Media Narratives forming, but some individual journalists know a train wreck when they see one. At a State Department press briefing on Monday, spokeswoman Marie Harf’s evasive non-answers about the escape “opportunities” available to stranded Americans led one reporter to ask, “What are those opportunities? Swim?”
Obama touted Yemen as a counter-terrorism success only a few months before the nation’s stability imploded at the hands of Shiite Houthi rebels. Was the State Department unprepared to help Americans trapped in Yemen because they believed the White House’s idiotic political narrative or because they were trying to avoid making any preparations that would threaten it?
The State Department has resorted to telling Americans under fire in a foreign land to call India for help. Desperate U.S. citizens are jumping into motorboats and seeking refuge on the far side of the Red Sea. One State Department brainstorm involved telling trapped Americans to try hopping a French frigate bound for Djibouti; they had to pull this message down because following State’s advice could put your life in danger. Those who make it home express their anger at being abandoned by the Obama administration to every reporter they can find.
Despite the catastrophe unfolding, there is no precious media narrative taking shape. No one in the press looks back to Benghazi and notes the similarities. No one asks if Obama is too busy seizing unconstitutional powers to implement his agenda at home, at the expense of attending to his actual duties as President. The mainstream media is not asking if the bumbling administration, so obviously flummoxed by events in Yemen, can be trusted to strike and enforce a complex nuclear arms deal with Iran. Saudi Arabia led a multi-national coalition into air strikes across Yemen’s borders, Obama’s State Department does nothing but watch in dumb amazement, and the American media finds nothing controversial or scandalous about it.