From Bush to Obama, and around the world, Western leaders are falling all over themselves to proclaim that ISIS is not Islamic, whereas ISIS declares itself to be proudly Islamic and the heir to ancient caliphates.
Looking-glass world.
Why is this happening? The truth—that there is something (and perhaps many things) about Islam that lends itself to violence in its name—is even apparent to such religion-haters as Bill Maher, who states it rather well (and, by the way, Charlie Rose is a simpering idiot):
But that is the truth that cannot even be whispered by those in charge. Let’s not even focus on Obama, who may or may not have a special fondness for Islam. This is not about Obama, it’s about the entire West, except for a few brave souls who don’t mind being called bigots.
Who don’t mind being called bigots is actually the key. Islam, after all, is a religion, and has been for over a thousand years. You can call it a weird religion, a violent religion, an intolerant religion, not a “true” religion (whatever that means), but it certainly has claimed to be one quite successfully for all that time. Unlike the other Abrahamic religions which preceded it, and which have a text (the so-called Old Testament) that contains some violence and misogyny, Islam is steeped in both—positively marinated in them—and those Muslims who don’t espouse such things are not in the overwhelming majority. Maher describes the situation quite well, but our presidents—Democrat or Republican—can’t seem to bring themselves to concur.
Another reason they don’t is that the West still needs, or feels it needs, certain Islamic nations as both geopolitical allies and oil suppliers, and Europe is in a worse boat regarding the latter than we are. Still another reason is the potential for internal dissension and even violence from and towards the Muslims who live in the West and are very vocal.
But if we can’t even describe what’s happening, how can we fight it?
Slowly. Very slowly. And Sharyl Attkisson, who’s been dogged in pursuit from the start, is still on the case:
As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares for its first hearing this week, a former State Department diplomat is coming forward with a startling allegation: Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to “separate” damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.
According to former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, the after-hours session took place over a weekend in a basement operations-type center at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. This is the first time Maxwell has publicly come forward with the story.
At the time, Maxwell was a leader in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, which was charged with collecting emails and documents relevant to the Benghazi probe.
“I was not invited to that after-hours endeavor, but I heard about it and decided to check it out on a Sunday afternoon,” Maxwell says.
He didn’t know it then, but Maxwell would ultimately become one of four State Department officials singled out for discipline””he says scapegoated””then later cleared for devastating security lapses leading up to the attacks…
…When he arrived, Maxwell says he observed boxes and stacks of documents. He says a State Department office director, whom Maxwell described as close to Clinton’s top advisers, was there. Though the office director technically worked for him, Maxwell says he wasn’t consulted about her weekend assignment.
“She told me, ”˜Ray, we are to go through these stacks and pull out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light,’” says Maxwell. He says “seventh floor” was State Department shorthand for then-Secretary of State Clinton and her principal advisers.
“I asked her, ”˜But isn’t that unethical?’ She responded, ”˜Ray, those are our orders.’ ”
They used to say “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.” In this case I’d say both crime and coverup are pretty reprehensible. And yet so far they’ve only gotten traction with the right. Will that ever change? I hope so, but I have strong doubts, and it’s for a strange reason: too many other dreadful things have happened at the hands of this administration for people to focus on any one thing. And that’s by design.
The other reason isn’t so strange. It’s that the MSM is still doing its level best to participate in the coverup, because this outrage was committed by the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton rather than Republicans. Ask Sharyl Attkisson; she knows all about it:
On March 10, 2014, Attkisson resigned from CBS News, reportedly due to frustration over what she perceived to be the network’s liberal bias and lack of dedication to investigative reporting, as well as issues she had with the network’s corporate partners. She is working on a book tentatively called Stonewalled: One Reporter’s Fight for Truth in Obama’s Washington regarding the difficulties of reporting critically about the administration.
Attkisson’s book is due for release on November 4, and the title appears to have been changed to the longer Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.
Strangely enough, that publication date is Election Day, 2014. I wonder who’s plan that was? Seems to me it would have been better to bring it out prior to that.
If you were to see me, you wouldn’t think “fat person.” But you wouldn’t think “thin person” either. You might think “there goes a woman who looks pretty good for her age”—if you knew my age, that is. But you wouldn’t think “there goes a woman who was once a very serious ballet dancer” (oh, maybe you would if you spied the legs, but we all know the legs are the last to go).
But I’m also a person who is always trying to lose fifteen or so pounds, and failing no matter what I do. And no, please don’t tell me about Taubes or Atkins; I’ve written several times before about how those things don’t work for me. In my dancing days I was very thin, probably close to forty pounds thinner than now, which made me fairly emaciated. But that’s what dancers need to be. And even though I was young, it wasn’t my natural state to be thin, and so I accomplished this feat only by dint of constant daily starvation, eating between 900 and 1000 calories every day although I was extremely active. This went on for years, and when I finally gave up my professional dance aspirations I gave up the daily and seemingly-unending starvation as well.
But enough about me. For the moment.
This PJ article on body fat and age is one of the best I’ve ever read. It puts the quest for that magical fifteen-pound loss in perspective:
Visible abdominal muscles are fashionable in Western society these days, but in some cultures visible abs mean poverty and privation, which is never fashionable anywhere among those who must endure it. Strength and health are not dependent on low bodyfat levels, which occur as a genetic predisposition among some people. Varying levels of bodyfat distribution are largely determined by both genetics and environment. Some people are fatter than other people, some people get fat easier than other people, and some people lose fat easier than other people. Losing fat that has been there a while requires that things be done differently, and just exactly how differently things must be done varies with the individual too. For people who naturally carry higher levels of bodyfat, attempts at radical bodyfat reduction can be expensive in terms of the psychological and physiological costs necessary for dropping below what for them would be normal healthy levels.
Let me just add that visible abdominal muscles are an even more elusive goal for woman in general than for men, and for older women they are rare indeed. Nature wants that layer of fat to cover them up, and gravity makes sure of the rest.
The mortality line is a not a hockey stick, folks. It is a “U,” slightly shifted towards the right…In fact, people of normal BMI have the same mortality rate as “moderately obese” people. According to the studies of all-cause mortality, mild obesity is protective, and both severely underweight and morbid obesity are, uh, not protective…
As we age and changes take place in our hormonal milieu, the physiological environment necessary for the growth of muscle and the loss of fat erodes. When you were young, you swam with the current; when you were fully mature, you swam in the lake; now that you’re older, you’re swimming upstream. I’m as sorry about that as anybody, but getting older simply makes staying skinny and muscular harder to do. It certainly doesn’t make it impossible…
For women, whose muscle mass and proclivity to create muscle mass is less than men to begin with, it’s even more difficult.
The answer for both sexes is strength training. For me (okay, so we’re back to me) I’ve unfortunately not been able to successfully add strength training to my aerobic regimen despite many attempts, because my chronic injuries have meant that every single effort so far at weight training (and that includes weights, bands, and/or machines, both with and without coaches) has ended in a significant increase in daily pain. But I advocate the practice in principle, and I keep trying to find a way.
David Haines, 44, father of two and aid worker captured in Syria, was beheaded by ISIS, as shown in a video released by the group. He had previously worked for aid groups in Libya and South Sudan.
Haines’ killing was no surprise, because he had been threatened by ISIS at the end of the Steven Sotloff video. At the end of the Haines video, another (as yet unidentified?) hostage was shown and threatened.
This will continue. It’s clear that ISIS is determined to offend and outrage the west to the maximum. This time they chose a humanitarian worker who could not possibly be argued to have a single thing to do with any violence. It doesn’t matter; the more offensive and evil and unmotivated their actions are the better, as far as ISIS is concerned.
I have previously written about the terrorists’ motivations for their behavior, here. I will just quote myself, because it still applies:
The audience ISIS hopes to reach is multifaceted. One segment of that desired audience is the people in the community where the perpetrators currently reside. For the ISIS terrorists, knowing that they engender fear is its own reward, but it also has the more practical goal of attempting to gain the locals’ cooperation, or at least their capitulation, through their desire to avoid a similar violent fate.
Then there’s the audience in the larger Muslim world. ISIS believes there are many potential jihadis, both local and distant, whom they hope to inspire to join up by demonstrating the intensity of their bloodthirstiness and therefore their dedication to the cause. The majority of people in the Muslim world are not going to become jihadis, of course, and many Muslims find such videos repugnant (as al Qaeda discovered some time ago). But as long as a significant number join and most of the rest are cowed, ISIS would consider the videos great successes. The Muslim world has a long history of bitter and violent disputes between factions, and ISIS’s brutality is also an effort to intimidate those it sees as its enemies within the greater Muslim world.
Last but far from least there is the entire west, both individuals and governments, those weak horses whom ISIS hopes will tremble and then appease them out of fear. Although we can probably safely say that most ISIS members have not read Yeats, the message they are delivering to the west is that they are the ones filled with passionate intensity, and the west is the one that lacks all conviction. ISIS is counting on the fact that the west is reluctant to unleash the full force of its arms against them, and that whatever retaliation it mounts will be tepid and limited and ultimately unsuccessful.
But even if the west somehow finds the will to fight back more forcibly, the jihadis are betting that, between their own dedication to their holy cause and the assistance of a deity they see as supporting them, they will prevail. It is sometimes said that terrorists such as those in ISIS are nihilists. But that definition isn’t a good fit, because ISIS members don’t believe in nothing. They profess belief in something, and that something is fundamentalist Islam and the return of the caliphate, with ISIS at the helm.
The west had better find its will, because these people can taste weakness, and they feed on it like sharks on blood.
[ADDENDUM: The next hostage to be threatened has been identified as another British aide worker, Alan Henning.]
…is considered by Sarah Yager of the Atlantic to be an abomination, bred for looks to the exclusion of the taste that gave it its name.
Well, I don’t know. Although I’ve sung my paean to the Jazz apple—expensive, hard to find, and stupendous in taste—and I think the last time I bought a Delicious apple (as opposed to a delicious apple) was a few decades ago, is the Delicious really so bad?
No. In fact, when picked off a tree (the last time I ate one), they prove quite worthy of their name.
The apple variety I dislike most are McIntosh, because they invariably tend to be mushy, whereas Delicious have at least a chance for crispness. But even the dread Macs are very good when picked in an orchard and eaten immediately. I’ve been to orchards that grow nothing but Macs and Delicious, and both types are so tasty that everyone scarfs down tons of them before they even go into the bag.
The thing those vaieties both lack is shelf life, a trait at which the Jazz shines bright. I’ve also had some good experiences with something even newer called the Envy, which is hard to find but almost invariably (I had one bad experience) tasty and crisp.
Just now, doing a little research, I discovered that the Jazz and the Envy are actually very closely related to each other (the Envy has “the same parentage as the Jazz apple, from the same producer”) although they look and taste quite different to me. Both are New Zealand-bred crosses between the Royal Gala and Braeburn varieties.
Envy tastes to me like a Delicious should taste, crisp and sweet. Look for the ones with the little flecks on the skin, the more the better. Jazz has a far more complex taste, with many overtones of sweet and tart and everything in-between to go with its intense crunch. To me, it’s the perfect apple.
You may wonder why I’m talking about red apples when my symbol is the green Granny Smith. Grannies have a lovely and unique color, and are fine for hiding half of one’s face. They’re not bad eating, either—but give me a Jazz any day.
After all this time has passed and I’ve written all these words on the subject, the spell Obama has been able to weave still puzzles me.
I first noticed the phenomenon in early 2008, when an apolitical and very intelligent friend told me that, for the first time in her life, she was going to work for the election of a candidate. That candidate was Obama.
My friend proceeded to canvass and phone up a storm, and seemed starry-eyed—which is not her usual state, believe me. When I asked her why, what was so very wonderful about Obama, she just said that he was inspiring and intelligent and she felt he was a different sort of candidate, and she trusted him. And there wasn’t a hint in her demeanor or her words that this was mainly about his race, either, although that certainly didn’t hurt.
It was something else. Whether Obama’s gift was a form of hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, con artistry, or just plain charisma, this friend of mine would have been the last person I would have thought susceptible to it. That’s part of the mystery. And I’m afraid to ask her how she feels about him now, for fear she’ll tell me something like this:
I was talking to someone at work today, and he normally seems like a reasonable guy, ex-Navy.
And then out of nowhere he exclaims how much he hates conservatives, and that he thinks Obama’s a great human being.
I asked what brought it on, and he just said “Because Barack Obama cares about me.”
I s*** you not, that’s what he said (and keep in mind, he’s not even a minority. He’s as WASP-y as it gets).
I just shook my head and turned around, because there’s no getting through to that kind of stupid.
Let me reiterate: my friend is not stupid. I’ve known her for many decades, and she’s the opposite of stupid. To top it all off, she’s usually very perceptive about people, and neither gullible or naive. Sharp as a tack.
I have come to the conclusion, after six years of this, that I will never understand it. And don’t say the explanation is “women.” I’m a woman, for example. And I know women who are quite immune to Obama’s charm, and men who have fallen for it. Nor does it even break down on liberal/conservative lines, although of course that’s part of it (the more rational part). I know liberals who’ve always had strong reservations about Obama, and I’ve read about conservatives who at least initially were drawn to him.
No, I don’t truly and deeply understand, despite all my efforts. But I’ll keep trying. You say, why bother? I think it points to a dangerous susceptibility in human beings, one that certainly didn’t begin with Obama, but one that has wreaked havoc in the past and will again in the future. To understand it helps more people to recognize it earlier, and to recognize it earlier has the potential of offering more protection against it.
The families of James Foley and Steven Sotloff have complained about the Obama administration’s threats to prosecute them if they tried to ransom their loved ones. It is completely understandable why the families would be upset about this. How could any family not want to do anything possible to save their members from such a horrific fate? And how could any family not be horrified that their own government might try to stop or discourage them?
I don’t think there’s anyone who could fail to sympathize. But that doesn’t mean the government isn’t correct in these cases.
Therein lies a terrible ethical, emotional, and practical dilemma. By paying ransoms the behavior of the terrorists is rewarded, more kidnappings of Americans will occur, and our enemies grow richer. And there is no guarantee at all that a group such as ISIS is actually serious about such negotiations.
Every now and then the Obama administration is right, and this is one of those times. However, they were probably particularly insensitive in communicating with the families, although I’m not sure that under the circumstances there would have been any acceptable way to say “no,” or any approach short of complete cooperation that would not raise the families’ ire and frustration.
But even before the families spoke out, I wrote about this issue and came to the very reluctant conclusion that the only way to deal with it is to never pay a ransom and to strongly discourage private sources from doing so, too.
That’s heartbreaking, and it also feels wrong. But anything one can do in such a situation, short of a successful rescue operation, feels wrong. The Obama administration’s policy on this may have been coldly conveyed in too harsh a manner, but it represents the stance of previous administrations, as well. You can’t pin this one on Obama, although you can certainly criticize him, and harshly, for dragging his feet on a rescue, if that report is true.
In her interview, the mother of James Foley says something cryptic. In addition to refusing to pay a ransom or to let the family do so, she says:
We were told that our government would not exchange prisoners, would not do a military action.
Would not do a military action? I thought there was a rescue attempt that failed. I’m not sure what she’s referring to here.
I have nothing but sympathy for both families, and I want to make it clear that I don’t criticize them for this. The problem is inherent in the situation itself. The perspectives of the family and the government are going to be different, and there’s no way to change that.
[NOTE: If you go back and read my post from a few weeks ago on the subject, you’ll find a discussion of the long history of US policy on the matter.]
It may have come as a surprise to some people when Ted Cruz got booed when he called for solidarity with Israel when addressing a group of Christian Arabs as keynote speaker, because American Christians these days tend to be very supportive of Israel. But it probably didn’t surprise Spengler (David P. Goldman), who wrote this article back in 2009 on the situation of Christians in the Middle East vis a vis the Muslim majority and the Jewish minority:
Christianity in the Levant ultimately failed for the same reason that it failed in Europe: populations that are nominally Christian did not trouble to reproduce…
…Their elite misplayed its hand seeking influence through Arab nationalism, and now stands to lose everything to political Islam. As a culture, the Arabs are in profound crisis ”“ their most celebrated poet, the Syrian “Adonis”, calls them “extinct” ”“ and their decline weighs doubly upon the dwindling Christina minority.
And when in decline, blame the Jews, which many of the Arab Christians seem to do. But despite the persecution of Arab Christians by Arab Muslims that has only escalated since the article was written, there is a safe haven for Arab Christians today. You guessed it:
There is little risk, however, that the Holy Land will end up without Christians. Although Arab Christians are indeed leaving areas controlled by Muslims, Christians are immigrating to Israel itself, where the Christian community has doubled in size in the past 15 years. Some estimates put the number of Christians in Israel at nearly 300,000, twice the official count. To Israel’s 120,000 Arab Christians and 30,000 others must be added Christian immigrants from Eastern European, as well as many Filipinos and others who came as guest workers and have settled in Israel.
I’m not sure how that would work, though, because Christians wouldn’t have the right of return to Israel.
Foreign Policyeviscerates Obama’s (foreign policy, that is).
Excerpt:
…[U]nlike Bush, whose flaw-riddled first-term foreign policy was followed by important and not fully appreciated second-term course corrections, Obama seems steadfast in his resistance both to learning from his past errors and to managing his team so that future errors are prevented. It is hard to think of a recent president who has grown so little in office. …
The hope was that, in his second term, the president might address some of these issues. But by all reports, the situation has gotten worse. On the foreign policy side, this has meant that “the true believers” — as one first-termer called McDonough, Rice, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, and U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, among others — have moved up and gained power, periodically being supported by Obama’s closest political advisors. Many of the people who often offset their views — such as Hillary Clinton, former CIA Director Leon Panetta, and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates — have moved on…
As Obama’s bubble has gotten smaller, the president has reportedly become frustrated with criticism too, compounding his famous aloofness with a more defensive attitude…
The whole thing is worth reading, although I think it gives Obama way too much credit. But the author, David Rothkopf, editor and CEO of the magazine, appears to be a Democrat and former member of the Clinton administration with impeccable liberal credentials. Considering that, the depth of his criticism is telling.
And as low as my previous opinion of Susan Rice (and Obama’s foreign policy aides in general) has been, the following excerpt (if true) still has the capacity to shock me. How low can you go?:
In one meeting, Rice pressed the German delegation relentlessly for leadership within the European Union. The Germans sought more time and consultation with other EU member states, frustrating Rice to the point that she lost her cool and reportedly launched into a profanity-filled lecture that featured a rare diplomatic appearance of the word “motherfucker.” Germany’s national security advisor, Christoph Heusgen, was so angered that he told an American confidante it was the worst meeting of his professional life.
(Rice’s bluntness and hot temper have undercut her effectiveness throughout her career. In July 2014, the New Republic reported that she once confronted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas outside the Oval Office, saying, “You Palestinians can never see the fucking big picture.” A U.N. ambassador of one of the world’s major powers told me that he didn’t “understand what she thinks she is achieving by talking to us like a longshoreman.” The brusqueness hasn’t helped with her interpersonal relationships within the administration or with her staff, either. It is a particularly frustrating Achilles’ heel for someone who is well known among her friends as having the capacity to be very warm, humorous, and engaging.)
I’ve never been much of a breakfast eater, even as a child. In my case it goes with not being a morning person. Over the years I’ve forced myself to eat it because it’s supposed to be A Good Thing. I would dispense with it at this point, but now I have to eat it for another reason: if I don’t, I get migraines.
Migraines are a funny thing, and not funny ha-ha. Everybody who suffers from them has his/her own basic pattern, but that pattern can change, and then change back again. Mine usually involve auras, most often of the typical visual type.
If you don’t know how that works, take a look. This isn’t exactly and precisely correct, and the aura usually takes about 25 minutes to go through its visual dance, but it’ll give you a rough idea:
The author of this WaPo piece, Janet Harris, says that for most women the decision to have an abortion is not a difficult one:
Getting an abortion is expensive ”” not as costly as carrying a baby to term or raising a child, but expensive enough that half of all patients need help paying for it. And in many places, getting a safe and legal abortion can be more difficult because of parental-consent laws, distance to an abortion provider or a gantlet of hostile protesters outside the clinic doors.
Of all these difficulties, deciding whether to get an abortion is often the least of them. The situation may be difficult, but the decision is usually straightforward.
No doubts or questions? No pangs of conscience, even if the woman thinks she ultimately made the right choice? No remorseful aftermath for some? Not even any acknowledgement of the existence of a moral dilemma? Only practical considerations matter for Harris; her article is basically an amoral one.
Harris doesn’t even want abortion to be called “difficult” by others. Her reasons are strategic:
…[W]hen the pro-choice community frames abortion as a difficult decision, it implies that women need help deciding, which opens the door to paternalistic and demeaning “informed consent” laws. It also stigmatizes abortion and the women who need it.
Musn’t do that.
I hope we haven’t “advanced” to the point of considering abortion an easy decision with no ethical dimensions. Harris offers no evidence of what she asserts other than her own personal experience. She extrapolates her own amorality to women in general. She states as fact what she wishes were true. But we should all be relieved that it’s most likely not. If Harris ever got her wish, it would mean that the amorality of our society has advanced to a very chilling and dangerous point. It’s already pretty close, as articles such as Harris’s (and this one) demonstrate.
You may wonder why I use the word “amoral” rather than “immoral.” The thrust of these women’s articles is that abortion is a morally neutral activity, and they don’t even want the language of morality used regarding it. They believe we should have no right/wrong judgments whatsoever in regard to abortion.
It’s another example of the escalation that is part of the leftist activist agenda. At first, it is claimed to be enough that something become legal. Next, it is demanded that it never be met with disapproval or criticism. The next step is the requirement that everyone celebrate it.
I’ve already discussed how flat and emotionless President Obama was when he gave his speech on ISIS Wednesday evening.
But what I didn’t mention was that most Americans, if called on to talk extemporaneously about the subject, could have easily conjured up the requisite emotion that Obama lacked. The violence and outright sadism of ISIS have aroused a special intensity of rage in the average citizen, if not in our cool president.
It wasn’t just his speech, either. There was a great deal of shock and disappointment earlier, even among Obama’s supporters, at Obama’s announcing James Foley’s murder and then going off to play golf. There were almost no pundits defending such callousness. And it’s not just the so-called “optics” that are off. This rot goes much deeper.
Last night I was watching a portion of a cable news show on Fox (I don’t remember which it was, but maybe Greta van Susteren’s?) featuring interviews with George Washington University students, asking them what anniversary was coming up (the answer, of course, was 9/11) and whether they’d heard about ISIS beheading two American journalists and could name the men who had been killed.
As with most of these surveys, some knew the facts. But it wasn’t hard to find students who were so out of touch that they failed to think of the first, and/or failed to come up with the names of the second. There was one young man who especially caught my attention. He not only didn’t know Foley’s or Sotloff’s names, but he hadn’t even gotten the news about their beheadings by ISIS, didn’t know the events had occurred. When the interviewer told him about it, the student looked at him in stunned disbelief.
I’m not showing the video to point out how uniformed this listener was, although it’s certainly true that he was very ignorant of what’s been going on. But we’re used to seeing that sort of thing in these clips (Watter’s World on Bill O’Reilly makes a specialty of interviews with voters whose information level is so low that they’re funny/sad). My point is that, even though this man obviously pays a minimum of attention to the news, he still knows enough to know this event was really, really bad, and to be deeply affected by it.
This is the quintessential low information voter. But even he feels this on an emotional level (his interview starts at around 1:37; he’s the one with the hat):
And that is one of the reasons people have turned away from Obama. His reaction to what’s been happening is just wrong. It’s off, and anyone who’s been watching and listening (still a sizable portion of the country’s citizens) can see that, whether they be on right or left.
Most people of different political persuasions can get riled up about religious fanatic barbarian punks sawing off the heads of journalists and videotaping the event proudly for all the world to see, in order to recruit more religious fanatic barbarian punks who find this all to be a great inspiration. Even people who aren’t usually disposed towards using the word “evil” find that it fits the definition, and they are roused to anger. And a president who sounds neither roused nor angry just doesn’t seem right.
[NOTE: Looking at the text of Obama’s speech, you’ll see that, for Obama, it employs strong language. He calls ISIS “terrorists,” who are “unique in their brutality,” who have threatened a group with “genocide,” and who have committed “acts of barbarism.” All true (although maybe not the “uniqueness”). But if you do a search for the word “evil” in his speech, you will only find this: “We cannot erase every trace of evil from the world, and small groups of killers have the capacity to do great harm,” a curiously passive and negative statement, although also a very true one.
Now, I’m not saying Obama has to call ISIS “evil” to be credible in this fight. But I think his failure to do so is evidence of a deep and personal reluctance to think in those sorts of traditional moral terms, or to echo George Bush with his “axis of evil” speech. If there is an axis of evil (and I believe there is), then ISIS is certainly a hub, so why not call it that, and with some outrage in your voice? Failure to do so has political consequences, as I think Obama is currently discovering. And I think those consequences are international.
That’s not to say that if Obama could talk the talk at this point people would believe he that could walk the walk. There have been too many missteps, wafflings, backtrackings, and support of the wrong groups and failure to support the right groups. Too much display of weakness. People no longer believe Obama’s words; only his acts will count.]
