Saturday, April 2, 2016

Barack Obama: Class Clown and Defender of Islam

Always on the lookout for new ways to embarrass himself and the nation, Barack Obama used the recent Nuclear Security Summit—a pointless exercise in empty rhetoric and photo-ops—to find two.

During the class picture of all the assembled world leaders, the man the press is now calling the “class clown” detracted from the seriousness of the event by flashing a peace sign. The other world leaders were not impressed or amused. Yet again, the president diminished his office and our country by acting like an immature college student. The Prime Minister of Great Britain, pictured at the right, was not amused.


Peace, man: Surrounded by world leaders, President Barack Obama gave the peace sign at the end of a nuclear security summit today

And then there was the kerfuffle over French president Francois Hollande. One recalls that the French socialist leader has been strong and resolute about standing up to Islamist terrorism. As opposed to his American counterpart, the feckless and pusillanimous Obama, Hollande has never had a problem calling Islamist terrorism by its name.

In a meeting with the American president the French president dared to pronounce the words “Islamist terrorism.” Well, you can imagine the horror that shot through the loins of the president and his flunkies. They apparently ordered someone somewhere to edit the tape of the French president’s remarks in order to blur out the words “Islamist terrorism.”

The Daily Mail sums it up:

The Obama administration is under fire for briefly censoring a portion of video footage in which French president Francois Hollande uttered the phrase 'Islamist terrorism' – a pairing of words that the president has consistently cut out of its homeland security lexicon.

Calling the omission the result of 'a technical issue with the audio,' a red-faced White House re-posted an unedited version of the footage late on Friday.

Hollande's remarks Thursday in Washington, following a bilateral meeting with President Barack Obama, urged continued cooperation between European nations and the United States to fight what the White House refers to as 'violent extremism.'

'But we're also well aware that the roots of terrorism – Islamist terrorism – are in Syria and in Iraq,' Hollande said, according to the official translation. 'We therefore have to act both in Syria and in Iraq, and this is what we're doing within the framework of the coalition.' 

The English transcript contained the correct version, and the White House, having been caught out in its own brand of Islamophobia, restored the deleted portion of the video.

But, what does it all mean. Allow me to suggest that Obama has shown himself to be afraid to pronounce the word Islam or Islamist or anything resembling Islamist in conjunction with the word terrorism because he is afraid of blaspheming the religion of the Prophet Mohammed. You know that Muslims are especially sensitive about such blasphemy, and, while Obama is not a Muslim himself, he seems to want to hedge his bets.

Remember when his flacks and flunkies insisted that the riots in Cairo and the murder of the American ambassador had been caused by a YouTube video.

Obama seems to feel that if he pronounces the word Islamist terrorism he will be blaspheming the religion of Islam. And he seems fear that that the wrath of Allah will be visited on him or on the American nation.

And now we also know that he was willing to damage relations with an American ally in order to make it appear that his precious ears had not been fouled by the expression: Islamist terrorism.

And the crushing irony in the scene was and has been that the socialist president of France understands the question of Islamist terrorism far better than Barack Obama.

We cannot rule out the possibility that Hollande was trying to confront Obama over his quivering fear of Islam. If so, it was well played. One can only wonder how the Obama White House could ever have imagined that someone in the French foreign service would not have noticed the censorship.

8 comments:

Ares Olympus said...

Stuart: Allow me to suggest that Obama has shown himself to be afraid to pronounce the word Islam or Islamist or anything resembling Islamist in conjunction with the word terrorism because he is afraid of blaspheming the religion of the Prophet Mohammed.

This is such a petty and foolish argument. I can't wait until Ted Cruz or Trump become president. Trump wants to ban 1.3 billion Muslims from entering America, while Cruz tries to nuance himself by adding the word "radical".

I'll take Minnesota's Eric Black's case for reference:

https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2016/03/cruz-fails-explain-how-his-favorite-three-word-phrase-saves-lives

Eric Black: You, senator [Cruz], know perfectly well why Obama generally avoids the phrase you want him to adopt. He is concerned about alienating domestic and foreign Muslims who are not terrorists (whose help he believes the United States needs in fighting ISIS) by adopting a phrase that they might take as an insult to their religion, which they prefer to think of as a religion of peace that is perverted by violent apostates. You may disagree that this is necessary or helpful, but your effort to portray Obama’s preferred word choices as deranged or political correctness run amok are undermined by your unwillingness to acknowledge that Obama has a plausible and possibly helpful reason for his preferred usage. This makes your constant mockery of it seem insincere or unthinking.

We all agree "words matter", but seem to see things in the opposite direction. One side seems whole religion of Islam as the source of evil of the world, and would seem to be willing to declare a holy war until the world is cleansed of this scourge.

Then there are adults who don't want to raise the voice of a few thousand thugs as spokesmen for 1.3 billion human beings around the world.

But as always, I understand, we all see what we want to see.

But if anyone agrees we should end our dependence upon oil and help dry up all the oil money flowing into the middle east, I'm all for that project.

Until then we still have to figure out how our oil got under their sand.

Sam L. said...

We don't have to do that, Ares. Fracking will do it for us.

Leo G said...

Or the Canadian oil sands Sam, if Mr. Obama would allow it.

sestamibi said...

Do not kid yourself. The American public is firmly behind our national embarrassment because he's makin' it real, nome sane?

Is there any doubt that he would be re-elected if could run for a third term?

Anonymous said...

"...while Obama is not a Muslim himself..."

What evidence do you have for that statement? Saying so doesn't make it so.

Ares Olympus said...

Sam L and Leo G, Fracked oil and Alberta Sand Tars are in an collapse spiral right now.

I'm not sure if I should be patriotic and hope they get a bail out, or be a capitalist and wait for them all to go bankrupt, and then get bought up for pennies on the dollar for asset rights for the next boom. I now see why communities who make deals for drilling in these boom periods ought to ask for their "supersite clean up funds" before their wildcat businesses go bust and move on. You can't happily sue a company that has a negative value.

David Stockman shows it is a storage issue at the moment, producers have to sell at any price to pay their bills, while when storage is used up, they'll have to pay to have someone take their oil, and that's when production will halt, and bankruptcies will really pile up.
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/fracking-collapses-production-soars-no-bottom-yet-in-oil-bust/

It's "normal" in the sense of commodity cycles, but its completely "unnormal" given we're probably in the last "cheap debt" cycle, and its going to be harder to get financing when the say 2024 boom tries to get going.

What's more strange is that the last price collapse happened after the economic crisis, while this one might lead it. If even below-production cost oil can't raise the global economy, we're in worse shape than in 2008.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

The Iranians today said we were violating the nuclear agreement, and had crossed a "red line."

This Obama foreign policy is impressive. Most impressive.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

And as for the "humanitarian" nature of Obama's policy to let illegal aliens to flood our southern border, it doesn't appear the Mexicans are too fond of illegal immigrants flooding THEIR southern border:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/04/mexico-torture-migrants-citizens-central-america

The Guardian is reporting that Mexico captures and tortures these Cebtral American immigrants -- with U.S. aid!

Time to wake up, America! This border situation is a nefarious disaster...