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Is the Administration legitimizing ISIS’ acts of terror?

Is the Administration legitimizing ISIS’ acts of terror?

Keep digging, guys

We’ve had several posts up dealing with the Obama Administration’s stunning inability to talk about ISIS without digging itself into a rhetorical trench—and a new op-ed by Obama just made things a whole lot worse.

Right now, the Administration has a budding—nay, flowering—PR problem with their Middle East policy, so it makes sense that the man himself would take to the media to attempt to explain what they’re thinking with this strategy. What doesn’t make sense is that the finished product would clash so fundamentally with what the American people actually need to hear.

From his op-ed:

More broadly, groups like al Qaeda and ISIL exploit the anger that festers when people feel that injustice and corruption leave them with no chance of improving their lives. The world has to offer today’s youth something better.

Governments that deny human rights play into the hands of extremists who claim that violence is the only way to achieve change. Efforts to counter violent extremism will only succeed if citizens can address legitimate grievances through the democratic process and express themselves through strong civil societies. Those efforts must be matched by economic, educational and entrepreneurial development so people have hope for a life of dignity.

Finally — with al Qaeda and ISIL peddling the lie that the United States is at war with Islam — all of us have a role to play by upholding the pluralistic values that define us as Americans. This week, we’ll be joined by people of many faiths, including Muslim Americans who make extraordinary contributions to our country every day. It’s a reminder that America is successful because we welcome people of all faiths and backgrounds.

There’s a reason why we shouldn’t elect a foreign policy novice to the position of Commander in Chief, and this is it.

In my recent post about ISIS’ latest act of barbarism, I conceded that poverty, hunger, and top-down neglect and disenfranchisement all contribute to an environment conducive to terror activity. Groups like Boko Haram and al-Shabaab have both capitalized on the human rights crises in Africa to present what looks like an acceptable alternative to the status quo, and that’s a problem that the West will eventually have to address if we’re serious about eradicating terrorism.

All that is irrelevant, however, when the President of the United States and his minions take to the soapbox and insist that we won’t win the war on terror by getting rid of the terrorists.

It’s irrelevant because it’s not what the American people—and the rest of the world—need to hear from the leader of the free world. As I said previously, the underlying socioeconomic issues in terrorist hotbeds are, in the eyes of the public, secondary to the immediate issue of hostages being burned alive and beheaded.

This is what the Obama Administration doesn’t understand—and it could end up tanking what’s left of their strategy in the fight against ISIS. They don’t understand the idea of asserting their power, because they’re too busy worrying about all the ways that their power may or may not be offending the rest of the world. They would rather throw a balm on an open wound than admit that they’re neck-deep in the world’s next big disaster, where every move means life and death and there’s no room for the type of “diplomacy” that has defined this rudderless Administration since day one.

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Comments

“There’s a reason why we shouldn’t elect a foreign policy novice to the position of Commander in Chief, and this is it.

In my recent post about ISIS’ latest act of barbarism, I conceded that poverty, hunger, and top-down neglect and disenfranchisement all contribute to an environment conducive to terror activity.”

I’m REALLY beginning to despair of you, Amy.

I’m a “foreign policy novice”. Ol’ Walleyes Clinton is a seasoned hand. I put it to you I could do better as Sec. of State than Hillary ever could, or as CIC. Which is not at all a brag. There are thousands of people MUCH better than I for those positions, many of whom have NEVER smelled the heady precincts of foreign policy formation.

“…poverty, hunger, and top-down neglect and disenfranchisement all contribute to an environment conducive to terror activity.”

Than why isn’t Haiti a major source of terrorism?

Seriously, girl…

Bitterlyclinging | February 18, 2015 at 2:04 pm

Will the sight of a mushroom cloud floating over New York, DC, Boston or LA focus his thoughts? Not likely. Obama will instead gaze upon the cloud and pronounce it good. The WhiteHouse is home to a jihadi. He cannot bring himself to criticize Islam itself or anything to do with it and sees the world in terms of conflict between the rich and the poor. If you are poor, you are poor because of the rich, not because you dont have the energy to rouse yourself in the morning in time to report for work at an appointed hour, not because you prefer to spend your time carousing with your friends, not because you choose to spend your time intoxicated under the influence of recreational drugs, and not because you choose to spend your efforts satisfying the whims and demands of your reproductive organs.

The problem is not that Obama is a novice in foreign policy. The problem is his worldview and policy is foreign and not aligned with the interests of the United States.

Amy asks, “Is the Administration legitimizing ISIS’ acts of terror?”
This is a minor issue. The issue that bears discussion is that ISIS has established a 7th century Caliphate, and the Sunni Islamic religion has strict requirements in how this Caliphate is to be governed. ISIS’ barbaric actions are required by Islamic law, and if not strictly observed the rulers become apostate and the Caliphate is invalid. If and when Obama admits this, the only way to counter it is to kill them all.

2nd Ammendment Mother | February 18, 2015 at 2:45 pm

“…poverty, hunger, and top-down neglect and disenfranchisement all contribute to an environment conducive to terror activity.”

One might point out that Islamic teachings, governance, edicts and culture stuck in the 7th Century might contribute to those conditions in a modern world?

Yes, the administration is trying to legitimize ISIS terrorism, at least to the extent that it is no better or worse than any other kind, as crazy as that goal is.

They’ve now dredged up Christian terrorist Joseph Kony, Harf offering him as ‘proof’ that other religions are just as bad, so be nice to Islam.

Their goal is to keep the meme floating for two years so Obama can punt stopping ISIS to the next administration.

It’s what brave leadership is all about.

    It’s pretty funny that Joseph Kony — a Ugandan tribal warlord who practices a weird mixture of African mysticism and Old Testament wrath, and who believes that he is being personally advised by an international panel of disembodied spirits — is the best example they can cite of a “Christian terrorist.”

      I’d like to see side-to-side polls asking Muslims worldwide whether they thought Osama bin Laden was representative of their faith; versus asking Christians worldwide whether they think Joseph Kony is representative of their faith.

    nomadic100 in reply to Henry Hawkins. | February 18, 2015 at 4:15 pm

    Kony was Catholic as a child but can hardly be described as a Christian nor can his movement, the Lord’s Resistance Army, be considered religious.

      Henry Hawkins in reply to nomadic100. | February 18, 2015 at 5:25 pm

      That’s exactly what Harf hopes folks will say, so she can reply, “See? Christians have got crazies coopting their religion just like ISIS coopts the ‘real’ Islam!”

        Michael Adebalajo and MAJ Nidal Malik Hassan practically held classes in Islamic theology (actually Hassan did, powerpoint presentation and all) citing chapter and verse about why they did what they did. And if you had a Quran handy you could look up their references such as Surat At Tawbah and Surat Al Maidah and your conclusion had to be their theology was correct. Their’s was a truly Islamic justification for their actions. If on the other hand they were mixing in a few Quran quotes with Santaria and animism and the occult like Kony is exploiting Christianity we wouldn’t arrive the same conclusion. We wouldn’t call their motivation Islamic at all.

        Ironically, what you’re suggesting is too nuanced for our self-appointed intellectual superiors like Marie Harf to understand.

Obama is a Muslim and that is where his loyalty lies. And since he uses the IRS for his own personal purposes, why would he not use the FBI or the NSA to gather info against any Dems who don’t support him in pretending Islamic terrorism doesn’t exist.

It’s as obvious we’re not at war with Islam as it is that Islam is at war with us.

Of course he is. Because . . . Islam good, everything/everyone else baaaaad.

“Efforts to counter violent extremism will only succeed if citizens can address legitimate grievances through the democratic process and express themselves through strong civil societies.”

**********
Gee, it is just me or is Obama sounding a lot like George W. Bush here? We can defeat terrorism by helping build democratic societies? Really? Seems to me we tried that recently in Iraq — until a certain holier-than-thou fellow named Barack Obama came along and said it was a waste of our resources. Anyway, as it turned out, the Iraqis weren’t really interested in having a democratic society. They wanted an Islamic theocracy — and now they’re going to get one, good and hard.

Remember the bumper sticker “What if they gave a war and no one came”?

New version… “what if they gave a war and only one side knew it”.

    Ragspierre in reply to Anchovy. | February 18, 2015 at 4:48 pm

    Or…”What if an Islamist killer gave you the choice to convert or die, and you offered him your advice on employment.”

It is interesting that when Obama and Harf refuse to note the role that the reactionary nature of Islam plays in terrorism and when obama refuses to acknowledge that Islam was an ethos born of a violent retrograde movement towards the fire and brimstone of the Old Testament, and that it in fact Islam has never had it’s Reformation like christianity, or reform judaism moment towards modernity, all Obama and that Dimwit Harf (how did that 20 watt light bulb get the job anyway?) all they actually have left to point to are for this otherwise unfathomably horrific violence is…
a lack of DEMOCRACY, and MARKETS, and good governance

and then they sounds exactly like Paul Wolfowitz and the other Neocons, which of course, is exactly how they have been acting exactly like since the moment they got into office, which is not a coincidence…

    Observer in reply to mrduncan78. | February 18, 2015 at 5:04 pm

    Yes, when George Bush was saying we could defeat terrorism by helping build democratic societies in the middle east, Senator Obama called him a stupid cowboy and accused him of imperialism and ethnocentrism.

    But apparently everything old is new again, and now the only way to defeat terrorism is to help build democratic societies — in places that aren’t the least bit interested in democracy or in civil societies or in free markets. Because of Islam. (But shhhhh, we must not talk about that. If we ignore it, maybe it will just go away . . . .).

The “poverty causes terrorism”/”they’re only terroristing because they’re poooooor” narrative kind of hits a brick wall when it comes to the Muslim terrorists who strike at the West. I can’t link from here, but Google doctor+terrorist and engineer+terrorist and it will become evident that these are not poor struggling uneducated folk who simply need a job and a free Obamaphone.

In kindergarten we happily believed that “A Stranger Is Just A Friend We Haven’t Met Yet!” Now we’re being told “An Enemy Is Just A Friend Who Needs A Job!” No Muslim terrorist we’ve seen, either in the Middle East or in the West, is going to settle down and play nice if we just throw them enough jobs, enough education, enough money. How many times do they have to tell us that they’re at war with us before we believe them?

Our country is being run by the Harvard faculty lounge.

Nobody claims to want a war against Islam, that’s just another Obaman straw man. If the US wanted to wage war on Islam wherever it’s found, the battlefront lines would be in Dearborn, Michigan, not the Middle East. We are or ought to be at war with terrorists, of whom about, oh, 99.99% happen to be Muslim, kay?

How does one say Kristallnacht in Arabic?

    Sammy Finkelman in reply to Henry Hawkins. | February 18, 2015 at 6:31 pm

    HH> We are or ought to be at war with terrorists, of whom about, oh, 99.99% happen to be Muslim,

    That didn’t use to be true, and is not a law of nature.

    It’s just that all the money is now behind Islamic terrorism, which is really a new phenomena since the 1980s, when it started.

    Where are the terrorists of yesteryear? The Palestine Liberation Oraganization, The Provisional Irish Republican Army, other Palestinian terrorist groups, the ETA in Spain, the Beider-Meinhoff gang, the Red Brigades, the Puerto Rican FALN, the Tamil Tigers? They used to be predominently Marxist. Gone, all gone, except for the FARC in Columbia..

    provision

Obama is an apologist for all our enemies, siding with any that are against traditional America. He is not so much legitimizing our enemies as trying to delegitimize self reliant, strong, Christian America (plus Israel). He plays the Che, Chavez, Castro, Mao cards, along with his race and gender cards. It’s the only game he knows.

Obama was raised by America hating communists and then black theology Marxists. He went to Columbia, home of Cloward Piven, from whom he apparently learned to weaken America by putting everyone on welfare. In Chicago he learned the Alinksy/Capone subversive way to rabble rouse the masses, and organize gang leaders. Many nefarious connections are still a mystery. Zero executive experience.

Whatever “nation building” we had going in the M.E., Obama was determined to tear down. He tears down our borders, tears down our health care, and his boy Reid tore down regular order and budgets in Congress. He’s only built the welfare state.

Obama’s promised fundamental transformation has so far only been a wrecking ball, using the IRS or JustUs to attack any that get in his way. Our problem is leftist Hollywood and the complicit MSM keep the liar’s approval at 50%, and unions are so enriched they can bus people to protests and ballot boxes.

    jayjerome66 in reply to Midwest Rhino. | February 19, 2015 at 2:12 pm

    “Obama was raised by America hating communists and then black theology Marxists.”

    I’m no fan of Obama’s, and never was, but where do you come up with this irrational stupidity?

    He was raised by his mother and his grandparents. His Grandfather was American to the core. He served in Europe during WWII, and was deployed to France after D-Day. He had enlisted, and was honably discharged in 1945. Why would you want to disparage an American vet like that? And his grandmother was as American as the US banking system, one of the first female bank vice presidents in Hawaii. There’s no doubt his mother was goofy — two short-lived marriages with non-Americans, and a tendency to football her kids to the grandparents. But where’s your evidence she was a card-carrying communist? Or that the grandparents were anything but patriotic Americans with a family tree that goes back to the founders?

      Arminius in reply to jayjerome66. | February 19, 2015 at 4:12 pm

      I love the liberal “how dare you look at the evidence if I wrap myself in the flag and appeal to irrelevancies” dodge. The evidence? Part of it is in Obama’s autobiographies. Newsflash: not all vets are saints, or even respectable. The fact is we know who Frank Marshall Davis is; a card carrying communist subversive who was under FBI surveillance for 19 years. This is the man Obama’s grandfather wanted to be an influence on Obama’s life. As far as Black Liberation Theology Marxists, the evidence for that is in everything James Cone and frankly Jeremiah Wright have ever written on the subject. The heresy of liberation theology is that it subordinates Christian teachings to Marxist goals.

      http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/ratzinger/liberationtheol.htm

      “In what follows, the concept of liberation theology will be understood in a narrower sense: it will refer only to those theologies which, in one way or another, have embraced the marxist fundamental option.”

      The black liberation theology that Wright/Obama embraced is solidly within the “marxist fundamental option” as defined by Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict.

“Is the Administration legitimizing ISIS’ acts of terror?”

Yes

Hello?…

“Barack Hussein Obama” is a traitor.

Is this thing on?…