It’s amazing how thoroughly President Obama has snubbed the families of the Marines and Navy petty officer murdered in Chattanooga, Tennessee by jihadi gunman Mohammed Youssef Abdulazeez. The White House refuses to order flags lowered to half-staff in their honor. As Stars & Stripes notes, Obama’s flacks won’t even explain why.
“I don’t have more information about the status of the flag over the White House,” said spokesman Josh Earnest. Isn’t that astounding? Either the President doesn’t care enough about the issue to direct his vast media apparatus to prepare an explanation, or he knows there isn’t an explanation that would satisfy the public.
It’s all the more puzzling because, as Stars & Stripes recalls, the flag was lowered after the Washington Navy Yard shooting in 2013, and even after traitor Nidal Hassan’s jihad rampage at Forth Hood in 2009 – the attack shamefully classified as “workplace violence” by this Administration.
“We’ve lost five servicemen, and as you’ve said, the flag goes to half-mast for all types of other incidents around the country,” said Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN) told Stuart Varney of Fox News on Monday. “Here we have five servicemen who lost their lives. I can’t imagine why it hasn’t been lowered.”
When Varney asked if the snub might have something to do with Obama’s reluctance to “acknowledge domestic Islamic terrorism,” DeJarlais replied, “He has a hard time with that concept for some reason. It’s here. It’s here to stay.”
Stars & Stripes notes Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), who has proposed a bill to arm military recruiters, issued a statement through his chief of staff about the White House’s failure to salute the Chattanooga dead: “They deserve our respect, and the significance of this event should be matched by the lowering of the flag. It’s a simple gesture that will reaffirm to the military and millions of Americans that these servicemen will be rightly honored. This is one that shouldn’t take any second thought on the part of the White House.”
Refusing to lower the flag to salute the slain of Chattanooga is such a petty gesture of contempt. It’s not as if makes the American people more likely to forget about the incident. The clown-car fumbling by officials to make it look as if Abdulazeez’s motives were murky isn’t fooling a single normal American citizen.
On Monday night, Cathy Wells, the mother of Lance Corporal Skip Wells – murdered at 21 years of age, son of a military man who helped liberate the country his killer hailed from, fresh out of boot camp and just returned from a trip to Disney World with his mom – appeared on Sean Hannity’s TV show, and said she had not received a call from the President. She said she was not surprised by the snub. (Hat tip: Gateway Pundit.)
Our gun-control-crazed President won’t be happy to learn that Mrs. Wells plans to honor her fallen son by purchasing a particular handgun he wanted… not to bury with him, but to wield herself in his name. Very unhelpful to The Narrative, don’t you know.
Hannity found it outrageous that Obama would light up the people’s White House with the colors of the gay-pride flag to salute the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision, and issue a personal proclamation to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, but would not lower flags or make a personal call to the families of the Chattanooga dead.
I’ll go Mr. Hannity one better: Barack Obama is the same individual who personally called professional left-wing activist Sandra Fluke to find out how she was holding up after radio host Rush Limbaugh made a joke about her. He made an absurd spectacle out of winning the release of deserter Bowe Bergdahl, thumping his chest and braying about how he would leave no man behind (unless that man is held captive by Obama’s partners-in-peace in Iran, of course.)
Invited to send a message to the President, Mrs. Wells said, “My son loved what he did. From the time I can remember, he wanted nothing more than to be a Marine. He loved what he did. He died for his country, doing what he loved, for the love of his country, and for his family.”
When Hannity pressed for some more direct words to the President, Mrs. Wells politely declined, allowing that it was something she didn’t want to say on national TV.
But by all means, Big Media, keep on wailing about how Donald Trump insulted Senator John McCain’s military service. Ignore the contempt our current President shows the military, when they prove inconvenient to his political agenda and ideology.
His busy schedule after the shooting – which he described as a “heartbreaking circumstance” – included a big Democrat fundraiser and a Broadway show, and of course another round of golf on Sunday. Maybe he’ll say something at the National VFW Convention in Pittsburgh today, where he is scheduled to speak. That will have to be good enough, unless his pollsters tell him public unrest has gotten serious enough to make it worth his while to lower those flags or pick up the phone.