Obama’s willful blindness

By Michael Ledeen, PJ MEDIA

He’s actually getting worse. This president will not admit that we are in a war, as President George W. Bush defined it, with various terrorist organizations and with countries that support them. In his overlong, rambling speech to the National Defense University on terrorism and national security, the president never even mentioned Iran, which happens to be our main enemy and the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism. Not one word.

You may well ask how it is possible for the president to talk about his counterterrorism “strategy” without addressing the main source of terrorism. You would be right to ask, and you should also ask how it is possible that, so far as I can see, not one of the pundits, experts and commentators noticed the omission. They were so busy with the future of Gitmo and where captured terrorists should be tried, and how many drones can fit on the head of a jihadi, that they missed the biggest thing.

Talk about a dog that didn’t bark!

The speech was bizarre, to put it mildly. It was often incoherent, as when he gritted his teeth and actually admitted that there is an ideological conflict between us and the terrorists. “Most…of the terrorism we face,” he said, ”is fueled by a common ideology…that Islam is in conflict with the United States and the West.” Without taking a deep breath, he hastily added that the “common ideology” was “based on a lie.” Why? Because “the United States is not at war with Islam…”

It’s typical of the president’s world-view that he would assume any such war to be instigated by us, but in this case the jihadis have it right, and he’s got it backwards. There is indeed a war, it is theirs, the jihadis’ war, and they are waging it because they firmly believe they are commanded to do so by the Almighty. They aim to destroy or dominate Western infidels and apostates. Those commands are in the Koran, and are repeated by a great mass of imams, ayatollahs and mullahs. Those thousands of Iranians or Hezbollahis who chant “death to America” mean just that. It’s the reason for their jihad against us.

But President Obama could not bring himself to mention that. Indeed, the one time he used the words “violent jihad” he wasn’t talking about the Quds Force, or Hezbollah, or Islamic Jihad, or the other terrorist organizations. He was talking about–listen very carefully–”radicalized individuals here in the United States.” Yes, if we take the text seriously, he’s saying that violent jihad is a homegrown American thing.

I know it’s hard to believe, but here’s the full context:

    …we face a real threat from radicalized individuals here in the United States. Whether it’s a shooter at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin; a plane flying into a building in Texas; or the extremists who killed 168 people at the Federal Building in Oklahoma City – America has confronted many forms of violent extremism in our time. Deranged or alienated individuals – often U.S. citizens or legal residents – can do enormous damage, particularly when inspired by larger notions of violent jihad. That pull towards extremism appears to have led to the shooting at Fort Hood, and the bombing of the Boston Marathon. (my emphasis)

Notice the sly use of “appears to have led” in the last sentence. And notice that he is only talking about “deranged or alienated” individuals. Lone wolves. Disturbed people. Not a mass movement that intends to destroy us.

May 26, 2013 | 4 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest

Leave a Reply

4 Comments / 4 Comments

  1. Once one side withdraws, for that side the war is over, regardless of what happens to that country and its people.
    Let think about this: “Islam/Islamists” has/have been at war against the West for many years, yet the West has always claimed that it was not at war with “Islam”. Therefore we were not at war.
    Denial is a powerful and dangerous instrument in the hands of politicians. This is propaganda directed against ourselves. The Boston bombing was “workplace violence” and not war against our country!!!
    Clearly, this administration does not believe in Western type of democracy as if the genes of the Muslim human beings were different from the genes of the non-Muslims.
    Biogenetics 1.0.1.

  2. Ambassador Thomas Pickering: There is no equal

    By Jennifer Rubin,

    Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering personifies the State Department mentality that so many conservatives find objectionable. He authored a Global Zero report arguing for unilateral disarmament and then runs to his co-author Chuck Hagel’s defense, saying it doesn’t say what it plainly does. He gets selected for a critical State Department review of Benghazi, doesn’t interview the secretary or high-level advisers, and writes a report identifying no one in particular. He famously replied that it was fine to leave out higher-ups because “because in fact we knew where the responsibility rested.”

    In a milieu where double-talk, evasion and protecting the powerful are rewarded there is no one better.

    Now we hear this from the Jerusalem Post’s David Weinberg: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/A-grand-retreat-from-confronting-Iran-314205

    My post on this is in moderation

  3. It should be clear to anyone in Israel except Peres and his band of pygmy followers that We are on our own which I always knew and have predicted. YAMIT
    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
    A grand retreat from confronting Iran?

    Washington wags are preparing a climb-down from Obama’s declared policy of halting Tehran’s nuclear drive.

    A new Washington report headlined by former US under secretary of state for political affairs Thomas R. Pickering argues that America should end its confrontation with Iran over Tehran’s nuclear weapons drive.

    Pickering and his senior “Iran Project” colleagues want President Obama to altogether drop sanctions and covert action against Iran. They assert that sanctions are only “contributing to an increase in repression and corruption within Iran,” and alas “may be sowing the seeds of long-term alienation between the Iranian people and the United States.”

    Pickering’s call for American capitulation to Iran is now being echoed across the Washington wag world. Numerous think tanks are seeding the American diplomatic and political discourse with similar messages, and paving the way for a climbdown from Obama’s declared policy of preventing (and not merely containing) Iran’s obtainment of a nuclear weapon.

    This week, the Center for a New American Security, a think tank closely affiliated with the Obama administration, made it clear which way the Washington winds are blowing. Its study, “The Challenges of Containing a Nuclear-Armed Iran,” was primarily authored by former Obama administration deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East Prof. Colin H. Kahl. He outlines “a comprehensive framework to manage and mitigate the consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran.” In other words, stopping the Iranian nuclear effort is already a passé discussion.

    Read More

  4. “The West as an Auto-Immune Disorder”

    Thoughts :

    “Men must endure / Their going hence, even as their coming hither;
    Ripeness is all. Come on.” [King Lear 5.2.9-11]

    “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

    The ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best

    Lack all conviction while the worst

    Are full of passionate intensity.” [Yeats, “The Second Coming”]