OPINION:
Since the horrific Paris terror attacks, President Obama and the Democrats want you to think that defending ourselves from Islamic terrorism will only make things worse. Bombing the Islamic State, you see, will make it easier for them to recruit.
Mr. Obama also says closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison will make us safer because, according to him, ISIL, another name for the Islamic State, uses its existence as a recruitment tool.
The president also insists that any effort to pause the importation of Syrian refugees while we strengthen the vetting process will also cause more Muslims to join the ranks of those insane mass murderers.
“I cannot think of a more potent recruitment tool for ISIL than some of the rhetoric coming out of here in the course of this debate,” Mr. Obama said while in the Philippines. He went so far as to state the bipartisan effort to make the refugee process more secure somehow “feeds the ISIL narrative.”
One of my co-bloggers noted the “curious paradox” of this position at my website: “Strikes me as a curious paradox that Muslims are not Muslims when they are active terrorists, but they are all potential terrorists if we do anything to offend Muslims. I have in mind the dire warnings of a recruitment bonanza if we don’t accept Syrian refugees.”
The fact that at least one of the Paris attackers exploited the Syrian refugee network brings attention to our own open southern border.
Terror attacks, by their very nature, are events which transcend partisanship. They are usually wake-up calls about the condition of the world and indicate whether political leadership is doing its job keeping its citizens safe.
Yet Mr. Obama simply sees the reality of the world threatening his pet projects. It is inconvenient for Mr. Obama to shift from his “legacy” work so he just won’t do it.
One day after the Paris attacks, the Obama administration responded by releasing five terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, keeping with Mr. Obama’s fixation on closing the facility and refusal to engage with any objective truth that should inform his actions. Interestingly, one week after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Mr. Obama also released five terrorists from Gitmo.
Less than a week after the Paris atrocities, Mr. Obama declared, “Guantanamo has been an enormous recruitment tool for organizations like ISIL. It is part of how they rationalize and justify their demented, sick perpetration of violence on innocent people. We can keep the American people safe while shutting down that operation.”
The fact is, of course, there is no mention of Guantanamo Bay in any ISIL recruitment material. It’s likely Mr. Obama knows this, but he has to somehow make it seem as though he’s engaged with the current threat, so he’ll jam the square peg of his narrative into the round hole of reality.
Mr. Obama’s bizarre, petulant attitude at a press conference at the G-20 summit in Turkey within days of the Paris massacre also received widespread condemnation.
In the first statement by the president of the United States since the worst attack on France since Hitler, with the bodies of victims still at morgues, and as the French declared war on ISIL and were hunting down terrorists in their midst, things did not go as expected.
In what could have been a Churchill-like moment for him, Mr. Obama instead chose to be Mr. Magoo. He started by commenting on how beautiful Turkey was, he then spoke some Turkish which made some people laugh (a joke!), went on about the global economy, inequality and cyber threats.
With all eyes on the president and the world looking for reassurance and leadership, Mr. Obama did finally mention Paris — by referring to the upcoming climate summit, “And as we head into global climate talks, all G-20 countries have submitted our targets, and we’ve pledged to work together for a successful outcome in Paris.”
Meanwhile the pools of blood at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris waited for the poor souls who would be sent to clean up the aftermath of a massacre.
Only then, almost as an afterthought, did Mr. Obama drag himself into mentioning the thing that dared to ruin his domestic plan of action for the next year: “Of course, much of our attention has focused on the heinous attacks that took place in Paris …”
Of course. But not really. You see, Mr. Obama had the last year of his presidency all laid out — race wars on campuses, anti-police marches, unrestrained immigration, climate change, gun control, name any old and failed leftist policy dream, that was Mr. Obama’s next year.
Now these dead Parisians were going to ruin it all! The answer? Behave as though it doesn’t matter. Speak as though nothing has changed. Refuse to engage with calls to actually engage, to govern, to admit, once and for all, that the bloodbaths in Beirut and Paris prove “leading from behind” was a stupid slogan that terrorists took for a greenlight to do as they pleased.
Mr. Obama’s insistence that his Islamic State strategy was working just fine, and that he had no plans to change it, was met with surprise and even outrage by the world’s press assembled for the summit.
The president was aloof, even cold-blooded, calling the massacre a “setback,” saving his passion attacking Republicans, and others with whom he disagrees, at home.
The situation is so dire even Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said this after Mr. Obama’s comments:
“I have never been more concerned. I read the intelligence faithfully. ISIL is not contained. ISIL is expanding. They’ve just put out a video saying it is their intent to attack this country. … There’s only one way we are going to diminish them and that is by taking them out, because they are growing. They are in more than a dozen countries now.”
Ms. Feinstein is right. Unfortunately for us, we have a president who seems instead to be at war with his own country.
• Tammy Bruce is a radio talk show host.
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