Obama, ‘Islamic terror’, Churchill--and Redemption

(Last updated: February 22, 2015)


Earlier this week, the White House held a meeting it called, “The White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism”.  It was supposed to be about confronting Islamic terror. It wasn’t. It was about ‘extreme violence’ (White House Press release, Office of the Press Secretary, February 18, 2015). Its goal was “to discuss concrete steps the United States and its partners can take to develop community-oriented approaches [emphasis mine] to counter hateful extremist ideologies that radicalize, recruit or incite to violence” (ibid).

 

Excuse me? The US President wants to create community-oriented approaches to a foreign threat that wants to come to America to conquer us (“New ISIS Video: ‘We Will Raise Black Flag [of ISIS] Over White House’”, FoxNews Insider, August 8, 2014)?

 

This isn’t poverty we’re talking about. It isn’t race problems. It’s Islamic Jihad against the West (Graeme Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants”, The Atlantic, March 2015).  

 

Think about the White House summit this way: can you imagine Winston Churchill declaring that he would fight Nazi aggression through ‘community-oriented approaches’?

 

That’s what the Obama White House is doing with ISIS.

As this summit unfolded, The New York Times, The Atlantic—and others--published analyses of how this Administration deals with  this Jihad. Those analyses were not flattering.

 

The New York Times wrote that, with a remarkable consistency, this White House has avoided referring to Islamic terror as ‘Islamic terror’. Instead, it has favored “bland, generic terms over anything that explicitly connects attacks or plots to Islam” (Scott Shane, “Faulted for Avoiding ‘Islamic’ Labels to Describe Terrorism, White House Cites a Strategic Logic”, February 19, 2015). The Times suggested that such a bland approach wasn’t going to cut it. To explain its concern, it quoted a recently retired Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA): “You cannot defeat an enemy that you do not admit exists” (ibid).

 

The Atlantic went further (David Frum, “Why Obama Won't Talk About Islamic Terrorismn“, February 16, 2015). It suggested that the President acts very deliberately when he refuses to identify Islamic terror as ‘Islamic terror’. His behavior is too consistent: “in every place where the word “Islam” might have been expected [when discussing terrorism], the word “religion” was substituted” (ibid).

The Atlantic concluded that this “refusal to acknowledge the aims and direction of Islamic terrorism is central to the Obama administration’s counter-terrorism policy” (ibid). That policy is not to fight Islamic terror. That policy is to deny it exists (ibid).

 

Republican Senator Ted Cruz (Texas) went even further. He doesn’t think Obama is simply denying Islamic terror (Nick Gass, “Ted Cruz: Obama 'an apologist for radical Islamic terrorists'”, Politico. Com, February 19, 2015). He believes the President is an apologist for Islamic terror.

 

To make his point, Cruz points to two recent incidents: the beheading of 21 Christians in Egypt, and the burning alive of 45 others in Iraq. The White House, Cruz said, would not acknowledge that those beheaded in Egypt were Christian (ibid).  He said, “ISIS is the face of evil, and these latest atrocities … our heart breaks” (ibid).

 

It’s strange: Saudi Arabia (an Islamic country) and Iraq (also Islamic) both call ISIS ‘Islamic terrorists’ (“Why Obama Won't Call ISIS An Islamic Terror Organization”, Israelshield blogspot, no date). Why won’t Obama use those words?

 

CBS News reports that the White House has an answer: Mr. Obama won't refer to violence by Muslims as ‘Islamic terrorism’ because he wants to deny those terrorists the ability to call the clash with the West a religious war (“Obama avoids using "Islamic" and "terrorism" in the same phrase”, February 19, 2015).

 

This assertion is stunning. It stuns for two reasons: first, ISIS calls itself a religious Islamic movement with a religious mission(Graeme Wood, above, ibid). Its speech is laced with religious references (ibid). Its goal is religious war (Jihad). It aims “to impose its harsh totalitarian Islamist ideology on all Muslims, kill off apostates (defined as all Muslims that do not accept its brand of Islam), subjugate all non-Muslims and build a radical Islamic state that will launch an unending jihad until it has created a global [emphasis mine] Islamic empire (“Q&A: What You Need to Know About ISIS in Iraq”, The Daily Signal, June 14, 2014).

 

Second, its leadership has been talking about attacking America since 2012 (ibid).

 

Making a claim that calling ISIS ‘Islamic terror’ will encourage it to call its clash with the West ‘religious war’ is nonsense. ISIS has been calling its ideology ‘religious war’ since day one.

 

Perhaps the New York Post has the best view of why President Obama is reluctant to call ISIS ‘Islamic terror’. It ran a picture on February 19, 2015:

  

 

 

 

 

 

Look at this picture. Barack Obama is the leader of the Western world. He’s supposed to fight terror.

 

Do you think wearing a blindfold to fight is smart?

 

Listen, folks. Some of you laugh at the story of the Final Jewish Redemption. In that story, the West is destroyed in some kind of war.

 

If you find that prospect laughable, take another look at this picture: it’s how your great leader goes into battle.

 

Any questions about the Jewish Redemption story?