OPINION:
Nearly two weeks after Omar Mateen went on his Islamist killing spree in Orlando, President Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and The New York Times are still searching for his motive.
Perhaps it’s under the sofa cushion with some random change.
The left is so boringly predictable. Unfortunately, that predictability is becoming increasingly lethal.
Members of the Obama administration and their wingmen in the press have been busy conjuring up ways to change the narrative from the truth — that this was an act of war against the United States — to lies necessitated by their ideological agenda. The carnage had barely stopped before they reached for the terminology of “hate crime,” because that’s something they think they know how to manage: define it, prosecute it, exploit it for political purposes.
Islamic supremacism they cannot and will not fight. The global jihad is an endless, relentless religiously driven violent movement of conquest. It’s much easier and politically beneficial for them to deal with a “hate crime.” This is why Ms. Lynch announced the Department of Justice’s decision to redact all of Mateen’s references to Islam, jihad and Allah during his 911 call, which she later reversed under pressure.
Going full Orwellian was a bit too much, even for the ultimate Orwellian administration.
The corollary to the left’s false flag diagnosis is its false flag “solution”: gun control, which, of course, would never stop a committed terrorist from carrying out an act of war. The terrorists of Sept. 11, 2001, slaughtered nearly 3,000 people using box cutters and airplanes. The Boston Marathon bombers used pressure cookers. Some of the Paris terrorists used grenades. And gun bans and strict gun control from Brussels to Paris to California didn’t stop those jihadi attacks.
But the left only cares about advancing its agenda, which means never letting a crisis go to waste (per leftist revolutionary Saul Alinsky), appearing to defend an aggrieved victim class (in this case, gays) and attacking the Second Amendment.
Mateen’s sexual orientation is completely immaterial. The only thing that matters is that he was a committed Muslim and adherent of jihadi ideology who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Another fact that matters: In the Muslim world, executing gays does not come from a directionless urge to murder. It is Shariah and, therefore, found across mainstream Muslim culture. In 11 Muslim countries covering 100 million people, it is punishable by death, including in Afghanistan, where Mateen’s family is from, and in Saudi Arabia, which he had recently visited — twice.
Those on the left cannot and will not acknowledge these facts, so they plunge us all into a deadly fantasyland. They invoke alternative explanations and offer bogus solutions so they don’t have to discuss — much less do anything about — the religious-military ideology coming at us. To make this about a “hate crime” or gun control is to make excuses for a jihadi ideology with millions of adherents who openly hate, persecute and kill gays. It obscures the truth about the Orlando slaughter and the true nature of the threat.
Facts and common sense rarely intrude on the left, because nothing must be allowed to get in the way of its fundamental transformation of the nation. You’ve got to admire leftists’ total commitment to their cause.
Several days after the Orlando attack, Mr. Obama attempted to defend his refusal to utter the phrase “radical Islam” to define the enemy. “Not once has an adviser of mine said, ’Man, if we use that phrase, we are going to turn this whole thing around.’ So,” he continued, “there is no magic to the phrase “radical Islam.” It is a political talking point. It is not a strategy.”
If there is “no magic” to the phrase, then why doesn’t he just use it? And he says the phrase isn’t a strategy to fight it, but he’s never had a coherent, effective one of those, either.
Mr. Obama doesn’t use accurate terminology for the enemy because if he did, he’d have to take more aggressive action to defeat it, both abroad at home. He is unwilling to do that. And frankly, most Americans wouldn’t care if he referred to the enemy as “rainbows and puppies” if he actually fought this war the way it must be fought.
The dirty truth is that while Mr. Obama views these jihadi attacks as horrible and deplorable, he also sees them as transactional costs of what he believes is a prudent anti-ISIS strategy. In 2010, he told journalist Bob Woodward, “We can absorb a terrorist attack.”
The problem is that we keep “absorbing” these attacks while he putters about with his no-strategy “strategy.”
Mr. Obama may think he’s winning the political game, and in the short term, he may very well be. But he’s not really fooling anyone. The American people get the threat. They understand the reality. And despite his obscene efforts, no amount of Orwellian censorship can change that.
• Monica Crowley is editor of online opinion at The Washington Times.
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