EDITORIAL: Democrats ignore Islamic State threat to America

OPINION:

Neither bombs nor bullets can awaken Barack Obama and the Democrats from their Utopian reverie. Hillary Clinton’s inability to figure out who that enemy is at the gate betrays her as an unserious candidate for president. Neither of them seem to understand that the first responsibility of any president is to know the nation’s enemies.

President Obama’s remarks before and after the terrorist attack on Paris reveal a stubborn refusal to face up to the threat by the Islamic State, or ISIS. He wants to bring thousands of Syrian refugees, whoever they might be, to the United States and spread them across the land. Hillary, with her inability to distinguish between sheep and wolves, concurs. Bernie Sanders says global warming is a greater threat to America than the terrorists of radical Islam, revealing himself to be little more than a cardboard cutout to make the Democratic “debates” possible. The carnage wrought in Paris could be called a wake-up call, but with the flames of radical Islam licking at the edges of the free world, who could still be asleep?

Hours before the attacks Mr. Obama said the Islamic State had been contained, and on Monday he doubled down on the fairy tale. “Part of the reason that it is important what we do in Iraq and Syria is that the narrative that [ISIS] developed of creating this caliphate makes it more attractive to potential recruits. So when I said we are containing their spread in Syria and Iraq — in fact they control less territory than they did last year.”

The president does not understand the ISIS strategy that is clear to others, either. He continues to misread what radical Islam is about. ISIS is following a worldwide strategy, one of terrifying the “infidels” and so demoralizing them that it can take territory later. The strategy is working, and Mr. Obama’s strategy of “leading from behind” was revealed in Paris as the retreat of the weak and irresolute. Hillary and her rivals at the Democratic debate on Saturday night were revealed as weak and irresolute as well.

“I don’t think we’re at war with Islam,” she said. “I don’t think we’re at war with all Muslims.” Few Americans think that, either, and Hillary can recast the question but that does not alter the fact that radical Islam is at war with the West, and that the prospect Europeans now confront is a clear and present danger to the United States, too. Open borders are not a defense. Ahmad Mohammad, one of the Paris terrorists, held a Syrian passport and got to France by way of Greece and Serbia.

Four million refugees seek shelter wherever they can find it, Mr. Obama’s infamous red line in Syria stopped no one, and Europe is flooded with the desperate, the disillusioned and the doomed. Now Mr. Obama, who learns slowly when he learns at all, wants to double the number of screening centers in the Middle East for processing an expanding number of refugees to the United States.

Republican candidates for president, who uniformly scorch Mr. Obama for his reckless immigration schemes, raise warning flags over refugee resettlement plans that increase U.S. vulnerability. “We need to immediately declare a halt to any plans to bring refugees who may have been infiltrated by ISIS to the United States,” says Sen. Ted Cruz.

Americans have an old and honorable history of providing safe haven for the tired, the poor and the wretched refuse fleeing misery in other lands. We all mourn with Parisians for what happened as darkness deepened in the city of light. There is no betrayal of that honorable history and pity by avoiding similar tragedy on the soil of the United States.