Obama explains the strategy behind his refusal to say the terrorists are Islamic
There’s been much reaction to Obama’s stated reasons for not tying the terrorists to the Muslim religion they so obviously espouse. Before I add mine, let’s look at the heart of his explanation/excuse:
[ISIS and al Qaeda] try to portray themselves as religious leaders — holy warriors in defense of Islam. That’s why ISIL presumes to declare itself the “Islamic State.” And they propagate the notion that America — and the West, generally — is at war with Islam. That’s how they recruit. That’s how they try to radicalize young people. We must never accept the premise that they put forward, because it is a lie. Nor should we grant these terrorists the religious legitimacy that they seek. They are not religious leaders — they’re terrorists. And we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.
There’s a great deal more of his speech—it’s long. But that’s the essence of the part that deals with the particular issue of why he won’t call an Islamic terrorist an Islamic (or Islamicist) terrorist. He doesn’t want to grant them a religious legitimacy that he thinks will help their recruiting.
Let’s not worry for a moment about whether he’s right or wrong about whether the terrorists are actually holy warriors in defense of Islam or not, and just evaluate his tactic in strategic terms. It’s odd for several reasons, and the first is that virtually no one buys what he’s saying except the already-convinced. ISIS and al Qaeda have actually been religious leaders (although not clerical ones) to huge numbers of Muslim people. But Obama is so used to conning, often successfully, that he thinks he can pull off this con, too, and that it will matter in some way even if he does. And by this speech he’s revealing the con; although he implies that he believes his own words, it’s hard to believe that he does. But whether or not he does, he’s still tipping listeners off to the fact that he’s adopted this much-criticized method for strategic reasons.
In addition, to coin a phrase: what difference does it make? Does Obama actually think his refusal to acknowledge that these terrorists are of the Muslim faith will cause other Muslims to fight against them more vigorously, or motivate Muslim clerics to denounce them with greater force than before? Or, does he believe that if he were to say what everyone paying a particle of attention knows—that the terrorists are Muslims, albeit of a certain extreme type—it would actually cause other Muslims to withdraw from the fight against them? Or to hate the US more? Or that a young man not already inclined to join ISIS would be motivated to join it just because the US president might use some word like “Islamicist” to define the group?
If you read the rest of his speech, it certainly would seem that’s what he believes. But once again, Obama is in love with the power of his own words to effect the change he says he desires, and seems unaware of the much much larger forces (are there any larger forces, in Obama’s eyes?) that shape human reactions to something with as powerful and as threatening a draw as ISIS and al Qaeda.
In a way it’s stranger still that Obama is putting himself in the position of an expert on Muslim orthodoxy. I have never felt he was of the Muslim faith—I strongly believe he is an agnostic or atheist, although I don’t know for sure of course. But it’s a fact that he has a lot of familiarity with Islam based on his upbringing, and so one can assume he knows that Muslims themselves have been fighting for more than a millennium over who is the truest Muslim. With his pronouncement, Obama puts himself in the odd position of a Muslim scholar pronouncing on what is the True Faith, rather than the president of the United States.
Of course there’s always the possibility, as Ann Althouse points out, that Obama thinks that the terrorists themselves are lying when they say they’re Muslims, and that their profession of faith is fake. But is there anyone (including Obama) who actually thinks the terrorists don’t believe themselves to be Muslims? Hardly.
Obama’s statement only makes sense if you believe there’s a possibility that his strategy will be effective. I can’t see a shred of evidence of that, but it seems likely that it does come across to the Muslim world as weak and perhaps hypocritical as well (especially when he announces why he’s doing it).
Meanwhile, if one of the points of the whole charade is to get the backing of Muslim countries in the fight against ISIS, then what on earth do we make of this?:
The Obama administration was given multiple chances Wednesday to endorse a longtime ally’s airstrikes on America’s biggest enemy at the moment, the so-called Islamic State. Over and over again, Obama’s aides declined to back Egypt’s military operation against ISIS. It’s another sign of the growing strain between the United States and Egypt, once one of its closest friends in the Middle East.
This shouldn’t be a complete surprise; Cairo, after all, didn’t tell Washington about its strikes on the ISIS hotbed of Derna, Libya. Still, Wednesday’s disconnect was jarring. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest passed on a reporter’s question about an endorsement of Egypt’s growing campaign against ISIS. So did State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
“We are neither condemning nor condoning” the Egyptian strikes, is all one U.S. official would tell The Daily Beast…
Privately, some U.S. officials told The Daily Beast they worry that Egypt’s decision Monday to hit Libya””and its vows to do more””could do more harm than good…
The most common question Egyptians politicians, journalists and citizens alike have asked as their nation faced a mounting ISIS threat has been: “Where is the United States?”
First a rift with Israel, heretofore our biggest ally in the region. Now, instead of encouragement to Egypt—one of the very very few countries that has emerged from its turmoil with a government that gives some promise of being better than the one it replaced—perhaps a rift with Egypt just as that country picks up the fight against ISIS. Is Obama mad at al Sisi for calling for the equivalent of a reformation in Islam? Does he think they’re being too hard on ISIS, and that they should offer them jobs instead?
I want to say “unbelievable.” But actually, to anyone who has studied the Obama administration, it’s all too believable, and probably even predictable.
“I have never felt he was of the Muslim faith–I strongly believe he is an agnostic or atheist, although I don’t know for sure of course.”
To be fair, he was a staunch Christian when we elected him, although I suspect he was dozing through Rev Wright’s sermons since he couldn’t recall some of the Reverends pet doctrines. Since then though, don’t you think Obama’s been evolving? He’s always thinking, you know.
Given that Obama can not openly extend direct aid to ISIS, if he were ‘on their side’ what would he be doing differently?
By this, I don’t mean to suggest that Obama is a ‘closet’ supporter of terrorism, per se. I do mean to suggest that he is in favor of anything that reduces America’s influence and ability to act in the world. He also is undeniably, Islam’s foremost active defender among Western leaders.
Obama shares George Soros’ belief that, “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States. For my agenda to advance, I need to have America come down in a controlled descent, not a complete crash.” It is also obvious that he supports Soros’ “controlled descent”.
Not observant moslem, no. But emotionally, and culturally per his upbringing as a moslem boy in Indonesia? Of course.
Here’s what Jeremiah Wright said when asked if he was able to convert Hussein to Christianity: “I wouldn’t go that far.” —
[From Shoebat’s blog]:
“In 2008, video recordings of Jeremiah Wright’s sermons came closer than anything else to derailing Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Now, four years later, there appears to be audio recordings of Wright that may be damaging to Obama as well.
Those recordings, allegedly in the possession of author Edward Klein, consist of Wright telling Klein some unflattering things, to include charges that Obama attempted to silence Wright in 2008.
One claim had to do with Obama’s Christianity. During an appearance on Sean Hannity’s radio show, Klein said that Wright wouldn’t go so far as to say he converted Obama from Islam but he came awfully close:
“…the Reverend Wright told me on tape, that Obama came to him and said, ‘I need some spiritual advice; I don’t know exactly who I am’ and the Reverend Wright said… ‘Well we know your Islam background… but what you need now, is some coaching on Christianity.’
“And I asked the Reverend Wright ‘did you convert him from being a Muslim to being a Christian, and he said, ‘well, I don’t know if I could go that far but… I made it comfortable for him to accept Christianity without having to renounce his Islamic background.”
Everyone should read the Shoebats’ (father and son) blog about this issue. Walid Shoebat was a terrorist member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and he later converted to Christianity. He’s been trying to break the denial of the West about this ever since:
http://shoebat.com/2015/02/19/obama-makes-declaration-american-people-not-war-islam/
It’s really not that complicated: a blind man could see it with a cane. Kind of like arguing about whether “fellow travelers” are “really Communists”: the difference between them, as Whittaker Chambers drily remarked, can be so slight as to be metaphysical.
He sides with the warlike moslems at every opportunity. He loves the call to prayer. He was raised as a moslem. He blows off any actually MODERATE ones: e.g., the pro-democracy resistance in Tehran, the president of Egypt. He imports craploads of Syrians and Somalis, etc., etc.
All this is designed to hogtie America and bare our throat for the knife.
In the history or the human there are a lot of case and war driven by many causes, the main cause is religion/believe.
This not today or yesterday or tomorrow scenario, this ongoing fact all along the history, if you look the destruction of the kingdom of Judah, it was on religion ground?
Roman they came and destruct Jerusalem (597 BC) also it was on religion ground. And so forth whatever motive behind all wars the religion or faith or believe used, the question dose all those faiths and religions bad?
You may say so, but the human mix of bad and good, definitely the bad one are the minority but the good one the majority.
The question is why then the bad take control here the point you need to think deep why and tell us.
Looking forward to hear from you here.
Interesting that the DOD spokesman, Admiral John Kirby, quoted in that linked Daily Beast article as saying the U.S. relationship with Egypt is “complicated,” has just been outsed from that position by the new secretary of defense, Ashton Carter. Maybe Carter just wanting to bring in his own person, or maybe a signal of something else. I’m hoping for the latter.
Beverly:
So, why hasn’t Klein played the tape, if it exists and that’s what it says?
Ann
Let take a look to US Diplomacy
THE ROAD TO BABYLON
Searching for targets in Iraq
By Lewis H. Lapham
neo to Beverly: good question.
However, here is something in support of Bev’s general comment:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/02/obama_and_the_muslim_gang_sign.html
Maybe I read Althouse incorrectly, but it seemed she was leaning toward “Obama is very subtle and crafty….”. Which speaks to her continuing blind spot about The Won.
I imagine that Obama thinks he’s an expert on Muslim orthodoxy for the same reason he thinks he’s a better speech writer than his speech writers and knows more about foreign policy than his policy experts.
He’s an egotist that thinks whatever he believes has to be right. This is a problem for liberals in general, but for Obama it’s particularly so.
Steve at 5:56 pm,
Howard Zinn and Bill Ayers could not have said it better, they have nothing on Lapham. That you present that perverted historical synopsis as truth tells us all we need to know of you.
“Roman they came and destruct Jerusalem (597 BC) also it was on religion ground.” Steve
The Siege of Jerusalem in 597 BC was conducted by Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon. In 70AD and again in 135AD, the Romans dispersed the Jews throughout the empire, the start of the Jewish diaspora. Neither Nebuchadnezzar II nor the Romans behaved as they did for religious reasons.
Obama is not an atheist. An atheist doesn’t believe there’s a supreme being, while Obama believes himself to be the supreme being.
I suspect that future historians will join with mental health officials to probe endlessly into Obama’s psyche.
Historians will seek to discern motivation for bizarre decisions; the others to understand a phenomenon.
I am not sure that the riddle that is Obama will ever be solved as it is locked behind so many, dare I say, pathologies.
Language is critical. Bush tried to dodge a civilizational war by claiming we were fighting the tactic of terrorism. Obama attempts to avoid the civilizational war by pretending he can tell Muslims what is and is not Islam. What is required is to actually deal with the Quran, the Hadith, and Mohammad, that is the specifics aspects of each that al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Wahhabist, Salafist and ISIS use to justify their actions. White washing won’t work. That many of these Islamist groups are killing fellow Muslims with high disregard provides an excellent global platform for discussing fundamental beliefs about the religion (i.e. perfect and last words of Allah, Mohammad as the perfect example, etc.). Also, the cavalier use of takfir to label any Muslim leader apostate, therefore worthy of assassination, makes it fairly easy to join with el-Sisi to challenge the orthodoxy. Obama is either siding with Islamists or in denial.
Neale
“That many of these Islamist groups are killing fellow Muslims with high disregard provides an excellent global platform for discussing fundamental beliefs about the religion”
First part of your statement very truthful but the last bit not correct and it argubly confusing.
The question is if these terrorist believer which they are not then the last stent became irrelevant as warped themselves worth islam.