Announcing his executive actions on gun control at the White House yesterday, President Obama wiped away tears as he talked about the mass shooting of first-graders in Newtown, declaring “Every time I think about those kids it gets me mad.”
No doubt the president’s emotion was genuine. When anys of us think of first-graders being killed, our hearts break and our blood pressure rises.
But Obama’s tearful moment raises a question: Why doesn’t Obama show that same emotion when it comes to terror?
President Barack Obama wipes away tears while talking about Newtown and other mass killings during an event held to announce new gun control measures, at the White House in Washington January 5, 2016. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque.
Where was the emotion we saw yesterday – the raw anger — after the Paris attacks? Instead of wiping tears, and vowing to change policy, Obama held a petulant press conference in Ankara, Turkey during which he said no change in policy was needed, and that the massacre of 120 people was “a setback.” He attacked the critics of his failing ISIS strategy for “posing,” “popping off,” and advocating policies that have “no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people.”
Yet when it comes to guns, it is Obama who is putting forward policies that have “no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people.” According to the Washington Post’s fact-checker, none of new gun control laws Obama supports would have made any difference in stopping any of the recent mass shootings going back “as far as the Newtown shooting in 2012, which touched off the current gun debate.”
So when it comes to guns, Obama is the one who is “posing” and “popping off.”
Obama cited Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., yesterday, saying when it comes to guns “we need to feel the fierce urgency of now.”
Well, Mr. President, where is that “fierce urgency of now” when it comes to terror?
Obama shows no “fierce urgency” to change course when it comes to the fight against ISIS. To the contrary, his message is exactly the opposite: There is no urgency, no need to change policy. “We are going to continue to pursue the strategy that has the best chance of working, even though it does not offer the satisfaction, I guess, of a neat headline or an immediate resolution,” Obama said after the Paris attacks.
Obama shows no “fierce urgency” when it comes to Afghanistan, where an American soldier was killed yesterday fighting a resurgent Taliban, and where the New York Times reports al Qaeda is making a deadly comeback. In October, US forces destroyed what officials called “probably the largest” al-Qaeda training camp found in the 14-year Afghan war – including in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. That might seem like a major accomplishment, except for one small problem: There were no major al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan when Obama took office.
Despite the rising al Qaeda presence, last fall Obama once again split the difference and cut the military’s recommended force levels in half. That should come as no surprise. His own former defense secretary, Robert Gates, writes in his memoir that by early 2010 he had concluded that Obama “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”
Gates is right. When it comes to the war on terror, the only “fierce urgency” Obama seems to feel is the “fierce urgency” to withdraw. The result has been catastrophic: the return of al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan … the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria … and growing threat of terrorist attacks in the homeland.
And that’s a fact over which it is worth shedding a tear.
from AEI » Latest Content http://ift.tt/1mGPxJl
0 التعليقات:
Post a Comment