Monday, June 13, 2016

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.]

17 comments:

  1. Everything in Obama's world is a law enforcement problem.

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  2. The reason for the slow response is that the Left is trying to figure out who the greater victim is in this whole scenario. They can't make a decision. It would seem "Hate is very complex."

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  3. Trigger Warning,

    Sadly this is only going to escalate because we will keep failing to define the problem and spend our time blaming inanimate objects for the failings of human beings. If the removal of guns, or the new mantra of democrats "weapons of war' which of course means knives, bows and arrows, bombs, and a number of other items, worked then Europe and most dictatorships would be the safest places on Earth. It would be interesting if these people in the media actually knew what they were talking about. http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/12/nbcs-brokaw-calls-for-banning-gun-that-doesnt-exist-video/
    In each case there have been a number of "red flags" that presented themselves and our desire for being PC becomes more important than people. PC kills! http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/06/12/left-chose-islam-gays-now-100-people-killed-maimed-orlando/
    PC has become so entrenched that I am surprise that the ACLU hasn't blamed everyone except the perpetrators of these attacks? Oh wait a minute they already have. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/aclu-lawyers-blame-christian-right-gop-for-orlando-terrorist-attack/article/2593679#.V124yVR4wHs.twitter I fully expect the Little Sisters of the Poor to be blamed, the Lutherans or any group who can be demonized by the left to protect the real perpetrators. PC Kills!
    Until we are willing to define the problem we are destined to have a constantly escalating war, and that is what it is, agains't this country. http://observer.com/2016/06/jihad-denial-kills-again/ PCV Kills!
    PC Kills!
    PC Kills!

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  4. Our former prime minister, Stephen Harper, did not hide his animosity toward the jihadists. Still, a nutty new convert was interviewed by our police, they had no grounds to charge him and then he went out and killed a soldier. So it seems that there is little relation between the remarks and actions of a free country's leader and the ability of the mentally ill followers of bad ideas to commit crimes.

    In fact, it happened more than once.

    http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/driver-who-ran-into-canadian-soldiers-near-montreal-was-known-to-counter-terrorism-officials-rcmp

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/canada/11181394/Soldier-killed-as-gunman-brings-terror-to-Canadian-Parliament.html

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  5. http://neoneocon.com/2016/06/12/53-killed-by-terrorist-in-orlando-gay-club/#comment-1242606

    "Mateen was bitterly clinging to his guns and religion."

    ***
    What more needs to be said?

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  6. Priss rules,

    I have often wondered, given the actions of the GLBT community, when they were going to realize that they were just as much a target as Jews, Christians, et al in the ME? One can only alienate so many people before one might find themselves needing those very same people that they have shown such disrespect for their concerns. When they came for the Jews I paid no attention because I was not a Jew. One can keep adding various groups here until they come for you. http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/2016/06/franck_lgbt_community_is_isis_latest_target
    Until we begin to accept that we are Americans first and stop using all of these hyphenated names to segregate ourselves we will be subjected to the attacks of those who recognize that "A nation divided agains't itself cannot survive. PC Kills!

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  7. Is!and law is a starting point. That is, it would be lawful to discriminate not on the basis of religion but of law when permitting citizens of other countries to enter the US, whether on a temporary or permanent basis. They should be asked whether Sharia Law or the Constitution should be the law of the land. If they say Sharia Law it should be a factor in refusing them entry.
    A real problem is that the children of Muslims who agree that the Constitution is the law of the land may disagree and embrace Sharia Law, especially if this is being taught in mosques or madrassas in this country that they attend.
    The Koran is the source of religion and law and it has not changed in 1,300 years. Those Muslims or their children who become very religious are drawn back all those years. It's as if the religion can not get out of the way of progress so that there can be no real and lasting change towards peace and freedom. Over time these explosions of religious ferver burn bright and then recede, like the ocean tides. We have to deal with this problem in a more knowing and intelligent way. This failure to recognize the failures of the Muslim world as it meets the west demonstrate that political correctness is the cause of death and destruction when the real world intrudes.

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  8. Spell check does it again. "Island Law" should read "Islamic Law". Sorry

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  9. Ares Olympus @June 12, 2016 at 11:52 AM:

    When you produce this kind of nonsense, I wonder:

    Is Ares a fool?

    Is Ares trying to be a pest?

    Is Ares an idiot?

    Which is it? Pick one.

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  10. J, and IAC, if you can find any Muslims as individuals or groups who are cheering this coward for his mass murder rampage, feel free to share here. I've not seen that yet, and ISIS doesn't count, because they're just like Trump - they want to seem bigger than they are, so they'll gladly take responsibility for anything destructive.

    On non-muslim cases, let's see we start with Right Wing political hacks making manipulated and frauduant videos to slandering Planned Parenthood and then we magically have a deranged old man acts on this propaganda.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Springs_Planned_Parenthood_shooting
    -----
    On November 27, 2015, a gunman attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. A police officer and two civilians were killed; five police officers and four civilians were injured.
    ...
    Dear gave a "rambling" interview after his arrest in which he said at one point, "No more baby parts". ... Dear interrupted proceedings more than a dozen times, yelling: "I am guilty, there's no trial. I'm a warrior for the babies," later adding "Protect the babies!" Dear ranted "Kill the babies, that's what Planned Parenthood does" and accused his public defenders of conspiring with Planned Parenthood against him.
    ...
    In the court document for their 1993 divorce, his ex-wife said, "He claims to be a Christian and is extremely evangelistic, but does not follow the Bible in his actions. He says that as long as he believes he will be saved, he can do whatever he pleases. He is obsessed with the world coming to an end."
    ---------

    And here a degranged youth trying to start a race war to protect whites.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting
    -------
    The Charleston church shooting was a mass shooting that took place at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015.

    During a prayer service, nine people were killed by a gunman, including the senior pastor, state senator Clementa C. Pinckney; a tenth victim survived. Police arrested 21-year-old Dylann Roof, in Shelby, North Carolina. Roof later confessed that he committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war.

    Three days after the shooting, a website titled The Last Rhodesian was discovered and later confirmed by officials to be owned by Roof. The website contained photos of Roof posing with symbols of white supremacy and neo-Nazism, along with a manifesto in which he outlined his views towards blacks, among other peoples.

    Dylann Roof said "I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.

    ...Although members of the KKK swear to uphold Christian morality, virtually every Christian denomination has officially denounced the KKK.
    -------

    Are these recent cases categorically different than this latest mass shooting?

    Whether hatred by race or ethnicity or religion or sexual orientation, people who want to hate need minimal encouragement, but encouragement certainly helps.

    Any and every group whose existence is used to justify mass murder ought to denounce the actions, but even if they do that, it may not be enough if their words continue to espouse condemnation of certain individuals or groups. Its a small step between saying "The law is wrong" and "We can take the law into our own hands" and imagining God on your side surely makes this danger greater, even if the Atheists prove you don't need God to be monsters.

    Myself, I don't see how you explain any of this without psychology, like Jung's quote “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

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  11. That's because he is still trying to figure out what to say because
    he knows it was a hoax with crisis actors. Nobody died. They are making
    fools of us to take away gun rights.

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  12. @Ares,

    Great you found 1-2 examples. Here's an interesting chart showing the number of homegrown extremist attacks in the US since 9/11:

    http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks.html

    48 deaths due to right wing extremism vs 95 deaths (and far more injured -- marathon bombing could have been far worse) due to Islamic Extremism. For a tiny minority of the population to be responsible for twice as many deaths is telling. And this data excludes the 9/11 attacks which if added in make the total count 3091 to 48. Again committed by a small percentage of the population.

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  13. One of the problems we have as Americans is the idealistic notion of equality. And indeed a nation that came from a Christian foundation should view people as having equal value. But we get in trouble if we try to extend this to a laudable but erroneous view that all people have equal abilities and all cultures, worldviews and ideas are equally valid. To accept this, also requires accepting turning off reason and logic.

    Ideas have consequences. As much as we may wish that all religions and ideologies are the same, they have dramatically different effects on a culture.

    America does not have magic dirt such that when one arrives on the soil he/she instantly becomes someone who is able to integrate into the culture. Hence, the culture (and religious background) from which an immigrant comes from is relevant to how well they will be able to integrate and assumes an identity as an American.

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  14. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  15. p.s. Here's something even closer, a Shi’a Muslim scholar who recently spoke in Orlando about death sentence as a just and compassionate "final solution" to homosexuality, wielded by a democratic state that follows God's law, right in line with the Christian pastor above.

    http://fusion.net/story/313063/orlando-terror-attack-muslim-lgbt/
    ------
    On March 29, 2016, Farrokh Sekaleshfar — a British-born medical doctor and Shi’a Muslim scholar — was invited to speak at the Husseini Islamic Center just outside Orlando, Florida.

    His sermon, “How to deal with the phenomenon of homosexuality,” at the Sanford-based center, happened behind closed doors, but it alarmed local gay and lesbian leaders. Only three years before, in another U.S. speaking engagement, the scholar and sheikh had described in characteristically sotto voce what it meant to do the compassionate thing for gay people:

    “Death is the sentence. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about this. Death is the sentence.”

    He continued: “We have to have that compassion for people. With homosexuals, it’s the same. Out of compassion, let’s get rid of them now.”

    “The management at the Husseini Islamic Centre were unaware of these remarks when he was invited,” a representative of the Orlando mosque told Fusion. “Please understand that the singular views of guest speakers do not represent those of the Husseini Islamic Center. We want to reiterate that nothing, absolutely nothing, can justify yesterday’s atrocious actions.”
    ...
    Asked specifically about his March comments about gays in Orlando, as well as his better-known 2013 speech, Sekaleshfar called his approach an “academic discussion” in which he was describing the “theoretical angle as to what Islam says.”

    “I never gave the call to a death sentence,” he said, adding that lines of his 2013 speech had been taken out of context. “I was explaining what Islamic law – in a country whose people democratically desired Islamic law to be exercised – states in relation to NOT homosexuals, but rather in relation to when the act of anal copulation is executed in such an aforementioned public,” he said.

    Reverend Bryan Fulwider of the Interfaith Council of Central Florida called the sheikh’s comments on homosexuality as a “terrible statement.”

    The harsher attitudes of some Muslims toward homosexuality could never be carried out because the requirements are impossible to reach, according to Fulwider. Under Islamic law, Sekaleshfar told WFTV, to be convicted of committing a homosexual act, four people have to witness it.

    Still, Fulwider said he’s not defending the sheikh at all. The reverend said he’s focused on bringing calm to the vulnerable LGBT community and vulnerable Muslim community that have “become intertwined by a mad man.”

    “What this young man did has nothing to with the values of the Islamic community; it has to do with hatred, and probably derangement of some sort,” he said.
    ------

    Fortunately we're a country with a freedom of religion, and a freedom from religion, and we don't (yet) require all laws to be consistent with the old testament, but certainly many Christians would approve that, like wanting the 10 commandments at court buildings as a start.

    Someday things might change (if we were a democracy rather than a republic) and scapegoating minorities could become the law of the land by selective lawyerly readings from the word of God. That indeed would be the end of America.

    So I can see once the courts fail to protect minority rights, then a gun is the ultimate protest vote, and a tyrant government must take away guns before asserting power over minorities.

    It's still hard to imagine armed revolution as working to restore a constitutional republican once it's fallen, especially a government that has drones to bomb any house with nothing more than internet gossip to confirm it's occupants. Fortunately we're only testing this control technology on countries without our good principles of law and justice and innocence until proven guilty.

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  16. Keep digging, Ares. There's "scapegoating minorities," and then there's denial. Keep searching for these examples of human filth to justify your own bizarre view of how we really are all responsible for these lunatics amongst us, and how your solution is to demand MORE (always more) tolerance and understanding, pluralism and multiculturalism, embracing and celebrating.

    Get your head checked! Look about you! Yes, certainly you can find looney pastors in a nation of 300 million people, but you can't change the fact that it is a radicalized, weaponized Muslim lunatic who called 911, pledged allegiance to ISIS, and then went into a homosexual nightclub and killed 50 people... an action celebrated in many corners of the Muslim world because the gays had it coming to them. Omar's in heaven with his 63 virgins right now.

    There is simply no equivalence in 99.99% of Christian denominations. There is no large-scale FBI program keeping their eyes on thousands of Christians at the present time. There's simply no comparison. If you search enough, you'll probably find a vegan who owns a large slaughterhouse business, but it is very rare.

    You are correct, we do have "our principles of law justice and innocence until guilty," but it seems you're barely catching your breath in this fit of insanity in trying to deny people their experience. In this day and age in America, I think we're smart enough to know that Muslims are not all terrorists. But we are seeing that almost all the terrorists are Muslim, and they're not even pretending to use our nation's values to justify their actions. They are Islamists, who want to install Islamic domination through shariah everywhere.

    So cut it out with your tyranny of blind tolerance, and stop trying to convince us all we are just like the terrorists. We're not. We're not savages. And this is not a court of law... this is the comment section of a blog. Quit condemning people when they're just reflecting what everyone can see.

    These acts are not being carried out in the name of a "Religion of Peace." What Omar represents is a barbaric, virulent, metasticized, weaponized ideology using the glamor of evil to build a global franchise operation. It must be stopped. We are best to use all means at our disposal to stop it now lest we "tolerate" our way into having to use desperate, less-disciplined measures in the future because we're fighting for survival. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize there is something wrong with Islam in the modern age, as there are a number of sects and pockets of Islam featuring medieval thinking with modern technology. The ideology is driving these terror acts, not the technology. We have to attack the ideology.

    So just cut it out with the Christian equivalency or saying there is a commensurate level of right wing terror activity. Not every white person is a member of the KKK, and not every Christian goes to Westboro Baptist Church.

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  17. Ares Olymous @June 13, 2016 at 7:02 PM;

    "... and ISIS doesn't count, because they're just like Trump - they want to seem bigger than they are, so they'll gladly take responsibility for anything destructive."

    ISiS is just like Trump. And I suppose you think
    Trump is just like ISIS.

    Fool.

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