Obama Whiffs Again

Weak-kneed and irresolute, our fearful and feckless president stepped to the White House podium yesterday to blame the terror attack on the gun control lobby. And, rather than call for war against the Islamic State Barack Obama said that we all need to purge our minds of any residual homophobic tendencies.

Obama had been given yet another chance to denounce the depravity of Islamist terrorist. Yet again, he failed, and failed miserably. He knew that everyone was waiting for him to pronounce the name of Islam in association with terrorism. And yet, he could not bring himself to do it.

Obviously, he is afraid. Of what, you ask? Of blaspheming a religion that he venerates. Obama must be more terrified of blaspheming the Muslim religion than he is about what happens to America’s citizens.

Obama offered up yet another profile in cowardice. He showed no passion, no emotion, no anger…. Nothing. He was acting as someone who had been trying to run out the clock and who had just been shown for the incompetent weakling that he is.

After all, he is the president; his FBI botched the investigation of Omar Mateen; his security agencies failed to pick up on someone who was threatening to kill people and whose father was a notable supporter of the Taliban. It’s Obama’s America; we live in the Age of Obama. His job was to keep us safe. If any American bears responsibility for yesterday’s events, that American is Barack Obama.

Obama expressed no anger. He seemed defeated. He suggested that we need to shower ISIS with love. His supporters, culture warriors to the end, immediately blamed it on guns. Anything but blaming it on ISIS or holding the president accountable.

The anti-gun activists were so overwhelmed with their own righteous fury that they failed to recognize the obvious point: the terrorist attack on the Bataclan in Paris on November 13 took place in a country where citizens are not allowed to own guns.

Dare we to mention that if a terrorist uses a gun to commit his act of terrorism, he knows that he will immediately be exculpated by those who will rush out to blame it on guns. Thanks to the gun-control zealots, incipient jihadis know that their actions will not harm the reputation of Islam, but will serve as ammunition in attacks against the American right wing.

Obama’s supporters could not muster any anger against the terrorists or Islam. Some of them, whose names do not merit mention, even said that Omar Mateen was not killing gays because of the laws of Islam. He had learned homophobia in America.

A pathetic act of head-in-the-sand ignorance, to say the least. While ISIS is throwing gays off of buildings, while Obama’s friends in Iran are hanging gays from lampposts, the American left can do no better than to denounce America. For people who wallow in a culture of guilt, America is always at fault.

And weren’t you astonished to hear America’s commander in chief call upon all Americans to change their attitudes towards the gay and LGBT communities? This call for introspection is especially mealy-mouthed. Obama was saying that we needed more therapy, because the reason that Omar Mateen shot up a gay nightclub must have had something to do with the fact that many Americans oppose transgendered restrooms.

It takes a lot of effort to ignore Islamic attitudes toward homosexuality, but Obama was up to the task. For those who wish to be informed on the subject, Bruce Bawer writes in City Journal:

Islamic law, after all, is crystal clear on homosexuality, though the various schools of sharia prescribe a range of penalties: one calls for death by stoning; another demands that the transgressor be thrown from a high place; a third says to drop a building on him. In Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, as well as in parts of Nigeria, Somalia, Syria and Iraq, homosexuality is indeed punishable by death.

The terror attack yesterday made it imperative that we stand up to Islam and denounce Muslim attitudes toward homosexuality. Failing to do so is a sign of cowardice.

Lest you think that the American left was incapable of feeling anger, it did rise up in fury to denounce Donald Trump. For what? For getting it right. If Obama cannot show any willingness to face the enemy and to fight it, Trump said, he is unworthy of the presidency and ought to resign. If Hillary Clinton can do no better than to denounces the gun lobby she ought to withdraw from the presidential election.

What does it sound like when a political leader takes charge of his nation, unites his nation after a terrorist attack.

I and many others have expressed admiration for French president Francois Hollande’s response to the attack on the Bataclan. I quote it here:

To all those who have seen these awful things, I want to say we are going to lead a war which will be pitiless. Because when terrorists are capable of committing such atrocities they must be certain that they are facing a determined France, a united France, a France that is together and does not let itself be moved, even if today we express infinite sorrow.

You did not hear Barack Obama say anything about leading a war against ISIS. His administration is leading an investigation. One suspects that the investigation will not be completed before he leaves office. Did you hear Obama expressing any sense that the people who committed this crime or the people who inspired this crime, the people who were all over social media yesterday glorying in this crime, were going to pay a price? It’s very difficult to win a war when you are only playing defense. And it is also difficult when you limit yourself to drone strikes that lop off one or another head of the hydra.

In part, the Islamic State is a consequence of Obama’s decision to withdraw from Iraq. However well-intentioned it was, jihadis saw it as a sign of cowardice, an unwillingness to fight. They believed that Obama had ceded the battlefield to them. Nothing has attracted more people to the Islamic State than the weakness of Barack Obama, signifying the weakness of a declining American civilization.

The Wall Street Journal put it this way, editorially:

Part of President Obama’s legacy will be that Islamic State grew so dangerous on his watch, prospering in the political vacuum that was created when he chose to withdraw from Iraq and then do little in Syria. The job of the next President will be to repair the damage done by those two historic mistakes.

It will not be done in a fortnight.

[Addendum: See also Andrew McCarthy's essay on what Islam and sharia law say about homosexuality.]