Inside the Obama Echo Chamber
Listening
to President Obama respond after a terrorist attack takes the lives of innocent
Americans is like being trapped in an echo chamber. The words all sound too familiar.
This
is what he initially said after the Boston Marathon bombings. “We still do not know who did this, or why, and people shouldn’t
jump to conclusions before we have all the facts, but make no mistake:
We will get to the bottom of this. And we will find out who did this, we'll
find out why they did this. Any responsible individuals, any responsible groups
will feel the full weight of justice,"
The day following the November 5, 2009, shootings that killed thirteen
and wounded many others at Fort Hood, Texas, the President held a press
conference. He began his remarks with a two-minute “shout out” to members of
the Tribal Nations Conference who were in attendance. He then proceeded to warn
Americans against “jumping to conclusions” regarding the motives of the
shooter.
It had been widely reported that Major Nidal Hasan had shouted “Allahu Akhbar” as he shot his unarmed victims. The
payback for the heroes and survivors of the attack was its designation as
“workplace violence” rather than terrorism, thus making them victims again with
lower priority medical care and financial benefits. They were not in a beauty
parlor at the mall; they were on a U.S. Army military base!
So, not “jumping to a
conclusion” and promising justice begins to sound like official statements that
are typed on a page Obama keeps in the bottom drawer of his desk, titled “Blah,
Blah, Blah.”
In the wake of the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attack that killed a U.S.
ambassador and three security personnel, Obama said “We’re going to find out exactly what happened. Ultimately, though, any
time there is a death of an American overseas, I want to find out what
happened, because my most important job as president is keeping the American
people safe. And we will get to the bottom of what happened, and we’re going to
make sure most importantly that those who carried it out, that they are
captured. My biggest priority right now is bringing those folks to justice. And I think the American people have seen that’s a commitment I always
keep.”
And then the White House launched a bizarre
effort to get the public to believe the attack was the result of a video no one
had seen and that it was not the obvious work of al Qaeda. The very date on
which it occurred—September 11—made that clear. The failure to provide adequate
security to a U.S. ambassador operating in a war zone and to come to his aid
has largely been stonewalled by the White House. In the words of Hillary
Clinton who was Secretary of State at the time, “What difference does it make?”
My first response to the President’s initial
statement about the Boston Bombings
was to notice that he did not use the words
“terror” or “terrorism.” It took an unidentified White House official to call
the event an act of terrorism later in the day.
Mary Kate Cary, writing
in the October 11, 2012 edition of US News &; World Report, had noticed this
as well. Referring to his speech in Cairo, Obama said he had come “to seek a
new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based
on mutual interest and mutual respect.”
Ms. Cary, however, noticed that “President Obama never once used the
word ‘terrorism’, just as he didn’t in his address to the U.N. General
Assembly” the month before. “His reluctance to denounce terrorism by name over
the last four years is part of a pattern.”
“The problem with using
the word ‘terrorist’ is that it creates tension,” wrote Ms. Cary. “Not only
does it acknowledge that there are extremist elements in the Arab world, but it
reminds everyone that the United States is vulnerable to attack. The White
House doesn’t like either of those. Better to disavow hateful videos and lone
radicals, and say the system worked.”
I don’t know whether
Obama even cares if people believe him when he repeats his empty admonitions
and promises. He does his best to look serious when he tells us not to jump to
conclusions and to expect justice, but we are still waiting for justice in the
case of Major Hasan and still waiting for answers about what the White House
did or did not do during the Benghazi attack. We do know that, after a good
night’s sleep, Obama flew to Las Vegas the next day for some fundraising.
I think the remainder of
his second term will include more militant Islamist attacks on Americans. The
enemy has concluded that Obama really doesn’t care. He has a far greater agenda
to wrap up, the “fundamental transformation” of America.
© Alan Caruba, 2013
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