President Barack Obama found time between golf rounds Thursday to condemn the beheading of American journalist James Foley by the Islamic State (also known as the Islamic State in the Levant or ISIL) and to assure the American people that he was all about protecting them against similar fates.
Unfortunately, aside from the President’s welcome condolences to the Foley family, the rest of his remarks amounted to serial misrepresentations about this latest act of terrorist violence at the hands of shariah-adherent jihadists. Such conduct can only assure that more of us will die at their hands.
For example, Mr. Obama declared: “No faith teaches people to massacre innocents.” Actually, the authoritative Islamic doctrine (or ideology) known as shariah explicitly calls for violent jihad to force infidels to submit to Islam and, as the Koran puts it, “to make them feel subdued.”
The President sought to reinforce the notion that, because ISIL’s “victims are overwhelmingly Muslim,” the group’s terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. In fact, practically from Islam’s inception, innumerable Muslims have been massacred by their co-religionists over such matters as Sunni-Shia differences concerning fine points of theology or insufficient conformity with shariah.
Mr. Obama also asserted that the Islamic State’s “ideology is bankrupt.” Calling that ideology bankrupt at a moment when it is palpably on the march from North and sub-Saharan Africa to the Far East and Latin America bespeaks a contempt for the intelligence of the American people. It is approximately as delusional and misleading as Obama’s previous, electioneering claim that one of shariah’s other jihadist franchises, al Qaeda, is “on the path to defeat.”
In short, President Obama’s comments marking the decapitation of James Foley are but the latest in a series of instances of national security fraud on his part. Intentional or not, they have the effect of engendering a false sense of security at home, even as they embolden our jihadist and other enemies – who are ever-alert to weakness, lack of seriousness, or irresolution on America’s part.
A particularly unsettling example of those qualities was evident in the President’s closing assurance that “we will be vigilant… and relentless” in protecting the American people. Actually, at the moment he is being clueless, disingenuous, and ineffectual in doing so. And that puts us all at risk.