Well, President Obama was angry during his address to the American people on Tuesday. He may have been angry at ISIS, although he was more angry at them for continuing to hold out despite being pummeled by his vigorous action than for the atrocities they commit. Why, in his far-from-humble opinion, ISIS must be on its last legs. The President may have been angry at the killer, but one wouldn’t know it from the speech he gave. The President wasn’t angry that the FBI had this guy and let him go, or angry that the rules the FBI operates under compelled them to call off its investigation of the killer.
Yes, the President did flash some of that good old community organizer venom – but not at ISIS, and not at the shooter, not at the fact he slipped through the cracks. No, the President is angry, and who is the target of this ire? Why, just as at every other one of these shootings, he is angry at Republicans, angry at people who oppose his policies, angry at people who don’t think that more “gun control” is the answer.
His teeth and tongue have rarely been sharper than they were during the lecture. One would have thought that Donald Trump had pulled the trigger himself, but the President saved his most scathing assault people who want him to use the words “Muslim terrorist or Muslim radical” or some close cognate thereof. The President will have none of that. He ridicules such a position as “just words” and declares that calling them “Muslim terrorists” won’t stop them.
The President frequently invokes straw-man arguments, and this is a classic example. No one has ever claimed that “all we have to do” is define them as Muslim terrorists and problem solved. No one, not even Donald Trump, has said we are “at war with Islam.”
But, let’s turn the President’s words around – if the expression “Muslim terrorist” is just words that won’t make a difference, why not use it? And why object so strenuously to those who do?
There is falsity in practically every sentence the President uttered today, but the biggest howler is his suggestion that the use of the term “Muslim radical” will somehow provoke normal, peace-loving Muslims into becoming – well, Muslim terrorists. It is a bizarre way of looking at things, because radical Muslims have been around for a good long time, killing dozens or hundreds of non-radical Muslims for every American or Englishman or Frenchman they have killed. They are provoked, not by our terminology, but by our very existence, our lifestyle, or civilization, and they kill those, Muslim or not, who disagree with their version of Holy War.
To listen to the President enumerate the many ways that ISIS is on the ropes is all well and good, but he fails to note that ISIS, for all practical purposes, did not exist as a major force until he pulled our forces out of Iraq. The US generals, we have been told, wanted to keep about 20,000 troops there; they would have settled for half that. The president, with a legacy to burnish, pulled them all out. The American voters might not have taken notice, but ISIS sure did, and did exactly what you would expect: they capitalized on the withdrawal and filled the vacuum by seizing great hunks of territory, slaughtering thousands of people, destroying ancient artifacts and priceless antiquities. Yes, the President is correct – ISIS holds less now than they did eighteen months ago – but he fails to point out that they held nothing three years before.
It is also especially hard to take the President’s attitude. He runs through the list of his achievements against ISIS, leading the listener to think (we guess) that his assessments have been perfect, his response has been perfect, that his plan has been perfect and his implementation of it has been perfect. The only blots are caused by those nasty, partisan Republicans, who just refuse to get with the program and support what he is doing.
And then we have the President’s first issue – gun control. Without acknowledging that the killer violated numerous laws, the President believes that if we had a couple more “common sense” laws, all would be well. And the President assures us that the killer’s Muslim faith is not a factor in any of this, and that he has no connections with anyone else. Wrong on both counts.
The President had the opportunity to be a healer. He had the chance to be a unifier. Instead, he chose to campaign on the graves of the victims and attack his political opponents. The killer was a native-born, US citizen. He turned against innocent citizens of the nation of his birth. The President did not get angry about that. He tells us he has no idea what the killer's motivation was, yet indignantly lectures those who do. The President blames guns, he blames Republicans, he blames conservative commentators, he blames Congress, he blames people who want him to say “radical Islam.” He doesn't like "tweeters or yappers," although he does a lot of both. He blames so many people who, in his view, figuratively pulled the trigger, that he sees no reason to blame the man who actually pulled the trigger.