Egyptians are enraged by it. They should be. I am, too.

And someone needs to primary McCain:

McCain’s remarks and actions in Egypt have further confirmed the popular narrative — as memorably displayed by countless anti-Brotherhood and anti-Obama placards raised during the June 30 Revolution — that U.S. leadership is aligned with the Brotherhood, and thus ultimately a supporter of terrorism.

What a fool. What an awful choice we had in 2008.

Gee, why won’t Baghdad Tim answer any questions?

Was it issued by Valerie Jarrett?

Is it wag the dog?

…the indefinite shutdown of 20 U.S. embassies in the Mideast and Africa after the announcement of a for-sure, impending terrorist mega-attack looks suspiciously gift-wrapped and well-timed.

For one thing, if we’re on the eve of a possible “9/11 junior,” what on earth is the president of the U.S. doing going on the Tonight Show for the umpteenth time?

Why is funny man Jay Leno the one who gets to ask Obama about al-Qaida, but he’s too busy for queries without punch lines from the Washington press corps?

The paradox is dizzying: The new “on its heels” al-Qaida, whose charismatic leader “Osama bin Laden is no more,” as Obama boasted during last year’s campaign, may no longer be as centralized, and CIA director John O. Brennan may claim al-Qaida has its eyes on regional preoccupations rather than on attacking us.

Yet this supposedly weakened “network of local-actor organizations,” as German Marshall Fund analyst Hassan Mneimneh described it to USA Today, has managed to shut down U.S. diplomatic facilities indefinitely in a strategically vital region stretching 6,700 miles by 1,700 miles, as the State Department frightens thousands of Americans out of traveling.

And apparently all because current al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri told a flunky in Yemen to “Do something!”

Who is really “on its heels” or “on the run,” to use the president’s campaign rhetoric last year — the terrorists or the U.S.?

When you shut down that many embassies, the terrorists win.

[Update a few minutes later]

The problem is that the administration refuses to admit we’re at war, instead insanely thinking that wars can be “ended” (the thought of actually winning one, against foreign, as opposed to domestic enemies, in anathema to them) by unilaterally declaring it over. And such a delusional attitude manifests itself like this:

Don’t look to Obama for leadership, especially in the area where his constitutional responsibilities are highest — protecting the nation’s security. In fact, Bagram is a problem of his own creation. Obama cannot reach an agreement with the Afghans to continue operating the base. No doubt Afghan president Hamid Karzai is none too happy about being abandoned in the middle of a fight. The administration cannot send the enemy prisoners to their home countries, such as Yemen or Pakistan, because these countries cannot be trusted to hold them. Obama will not move the prisoners to Guantanamo Bay because he has ordered that no prisoners be added there (which has reduced U.S. captures of al-Qaeda leaders to almost zero and cut off our most valuable source of intelligence on the enemy). He cannot bring them to the U.S. because of congressional opposition to his earlier attempt to move the Gitmo prisoners to the continental U.S.

Absolutely nuts.

[Update a couple minutes later]

This terror alert is “crazy pants“:

If ordinary Americans are confused, they’re in good company. Analysts who’ve devoted their careers to studying al Qaida and U.S. counterterrorism strategy can’t really make sense of it, either. There’s general agreement that the diffuse list of potential targets has to do with either specific connections authorities are tracking, or places that might lack the defenses to ward off an attack. Beyond that, however, even the experts are stumped.

Take this sampling of reactions from prominent al Qaida observers:

“It’s crazy pants – you can quote me,” said Will McCants, a former State Department adviser on counterterrorism who this month joins the Brookings Saban Center as the director of its project on U.S. relations with the Islamic world.

“We just showed our hand, so now they’re obviously going to change their position on when and where” to attack, said Nada Bakos, a former CIA analyst who was part of the team that hunted Osama bin Laden for years.

“It’s not completely random, but most people are, like, ‘Whaaat?’” said Aaron Zelin, who researches militants for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and blogs about them at Jihadology.net

“I’m not going to argue that it’s not willy-nilly, but it’s hard for me to come down too critical because I simply don’t know their reasoning,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism specialist at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington research institute.

I think he’s being generous in assuming that there is actual reasoning going on.

…not “workplace violence.”

I signed the petition.

What in the hell does “the core of Al Qaeda” even mean?

It’s a de facto “core” even if the administration doesn’t want to call it that, just as there’s a de facto U.S. retreat is in progress even if the administration doesn’t want to call it that. After all, the evacuation of personnel and the closure of diplomatic missions are physical acts involving actual people being transported thousands of miles. They are actions in which real concrete and steel buildings are being shuttered, at least temporarily. Set against these tangible events are Carney’s word games about the core and the periphery.

This is nothing except a pathetic attempt to continue to maintain the campaign lies of last year.

The Egyptians turn on us. But there is this:

The idea that observing the treaty with Israel is something the US “buys” from the Egyptian military with aid is a typical US liberal media construct. It magnifies our importance and flatters our narcissism, distorts the nature of our relationships with Israel and its neighbors, and provides a simplistic picture of both Egypt and US policy. The Egyptian military supports the peace treaty with Israel because stability on its eastern frontier (and the return of Sinai, which came with the treaty) are in Egypt’s national interest.

I think that one of the reasons the military tossed out Morsi (in addition to the obvious public dissatisfaction with his incompetent and ideological, undemocratic rule) was that they didn’t want to get sucked into a war with Israel.