In a rare moment of brutal honesty, the White House acknowledged that they should have sent a higher-ranking member of the administration to Paris for the unity march to acknowledge the Charlie Hedbo attacks.
That’s a refreshing change from a White House that has blindly defended the president over everything from going golfing just moments after acknowledging the tragic death of slain journalist James Foley to visiting Texas but somehow skipping an expected visit to a detention facility filled with illegal immigrant children tempted to cross the border by the administration’s wishy-washy stance on citizenship.
The media, in a rare change of pace, has also held the president’s feet to the fire for this misstep, perhaps because they’ve finally realized the importance of defending Western values from twisted Islamists. It took a little over 13 years for them to see that, but let’s give credit where credit is due.
So we now have the press secretary sheepishly admitting the administration made a mistake. That’s good. One part of being a good leader is acknowledging your missteps, but more importantly, it’s changing your behavior.
I’m less than confident, however, that we’re going to see a change of behavior from an administration that has proven time and time again that they don’t learn their lesson.
If they did, their response to a Republican takeover of the Senate would be to change their leadership style to make sure the country can actually be governed again. Instead, we’ve seen the White House greet the 114th Congress with a raft of veto threats.
It’s like a child who’s put in time out, apologizes, and then again hits his sister. In this case, the sister is a democratically elected symbol of the will of the American people.
I fear that this childishness is going to continue, particularly when it comes to the most recent attack in Paris that was designed to sow crisis and chaos and get the western world to cower to radical Islamists.
President Obama’s absence at the unity march sent a sour message to both our allies and the terrorists - we don’t stand with our allies against radical Islam. And now he needs to retract that message with his actions. The Paris snub mea culpa should be more than just lip service.
There are clear steps this White House should take. They should start by changing their own behavior. Like, maybe they could stop stalking Fox News reporters or eavesdropping on Sherryl Atkinson or they can finally coming clean on the IRS scandal, basic steps that would show we have decent people serving in higher office.
More importantly, this president should show some real leadership and use his clout and remaining global respect to be not just a forceful proponent of democracy, but a stalwart against Islamic radicals.
Instead, we’re seeing a White House that shies away from being frank on the nature of the attackers and their ideology. In response, we saw the administration go so far as to host a summit on violent extremism. Not Islamic extremism like the kind that left cartoonist reporters and 2,000 Nigerians dead this month alone, but extremists of all types, as if to suggest that a few deadly nutcases carrying out isolated attacks comes even close to the systemic threat to daily life posed by Islamist fascists.
The grisly murder of reporters at the hands of ISIS, the Boston bombings, the Ft. Hood shooting, the full-scale massacre of religious minorities with genocidal intent wasn’t enough to scare the administration into being candid.
Looking at the world leaders who gathered in France along with the millions who joined in the streets for a peaceful message of solidarity with the slain, you would hope that this would finally be the last straw.
But unfortunately, all we are left with is a half-hearted “I’m sorry,” an apology and an empty space on the global stage that should have been filled by the president of the United States of America.
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