After the 9/11 attacks, politicians divided into two camps. The 9/12ers were the largest. They believed the world had changed and America faced a frightening new threat from Islamic terrorists. But there were plenty of 9/10ers. They were mostly liberals and Democrats who felt the world wasn’t much different than it had been the day before the attacks. America was not in great peril. The 9/10ers downplayed the threat of Islamic jihadism.
It’s been 15 years since the assaults on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The 9/10 crowd has grown to dominate the Democratic party, the left, and the mainstream media. And it has a spokesman: President Barack Obama. He treats the killing of innocent Americans by radical Islamists as horrific but not a cause for nationwide fear or anxiety. Obama is President 9/10.
He did all he could in the days after the Orlando massacre to diminish its significance. He insinuated the killer’s embrace of Islamic State, the terrorist organization, was tenuous since it occurred “at the last minute.” He downgraded the international terrorist threat. He claimed ISIL, as he refers to the Islamic State, is “on defense” and “under more pressure than ever before.”
Obama characterized the killer, Omar Mateen, as merely a “homegrown extremist” and noted the absence of evidence the attack had been planned or ordered by ISIL. “That distinction is . . . irrelevant,” Marc Thiessen wrote in the Washington Post. The leaders of the Islamic State have called on supporters around the world to carry out terrorist acts without waiting for direct orders. What’s more, they’ve specifically asked supporters for last-minute pledges of loyalty, such as the one Mateen gave.
After Mateen killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, he was described by Obama as an unlikable loner. He “took in extremist information and propaganda over the Internet,” the president said. “He appears to have been an angry, disturbed, unstable young man who became radicalized.” Maybe so. Terrorist groups are full of such young men.
That was two days after the massacre. By then, it was public knowledge the killer had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, yelled “Allahu Akbar” during the attack, traveled twice to Saudi Arabia, befriended at a Florida mosque a man who became a suicide bomber in Syria, been reported to authorities for lauding terrorism, and been interviewed by the FBI.
Given all this, it’s hard to imagine another president who would have responded as Obama has to the Orlando bloodbath. He started with formulaic words about the malevolence of the attack and what he was going to do about it. Then he changed the subject. That’s his pattern.
Obama must like boilerplate because he delivers so much of it. “Over the coming days, we’ll uncover why and how this happened, and we will go wherever the facts lead us,” he said in his initial response, hours after the carnage ended. Then he declared Americans must “change” their feelings about gays. What did American feelings have to do with the terrorist attack? Nothing. Obama neglected to mention that homosexuality has been normalized in American life in recent years.
By the next day, it was clear the Orlando killer was a jihadist. But Obama was unrepentant. “I’m sure we will find that there are connections—regardless of the particular motivations of this killer—there are connections between this vicious, bankrupt ideology and general attitudes towards gays and lesbians,” he insisted. “And unfortunately that’s something that the LGBT community is subject to not just by ISIL but by a lot of groups that purport to speak on behalf of God around the world.”
The day after that, President 9/10 boasted about how well the fight against ISIL was going and raised two other subjects. One was gun control, the default position of Democrats when there’s an attack by an Islamic extremist or any mass killer. But what really angered Obama was criticism of his refusal to use the phase “radical Islam” or to attach the word “Islamic” to anything having to do with terrorism. He said Republicans “tell us . . . we can’t beat ISIL unless we call them ‘radical Islamists.’ ”
That’s not quite the point Republicans are making. They say his avoidance of the phrase shows he doesn’t understand the nature of the terrorist enemy. And that undermines and limits the war on terrorism.
In defending himself, Obama said ISIL shouldn’t be seen as legitimately Islamic. Identifying it as a band of believers in “radical Islam” would imply they “are the true leaders of over a billion Muslims around the world who reject their crazy notions.”
My guess is Obama is sincere about this, just wrong. Why wouldn’t a peaceful Muslim appreciate being set apart from a terrorist Muslim? The phrase “ ’Radical Islam’ distinguishes between extremists and moderates,” David Harsanyi, a senior editor at the Federalist, wrote. “Other than allowing liberals to accuse anyone who brings up theological problems of being Islamophobic, what other purpose does ignoring this distinction achieve? The president has yet to explain.”
That’s not all Obama hasn’t explained. Why does he downplay the seriousness of the terrorist threat? Why is he a 9/10 president? The answer is he fears the American people will overreact to an attack by Islamic jihadists and get America into trouble, perhaps into another war.
Nor has Obama explained why he and Democrats eagerly change the subject when terrorism is a hot topic. Last week, they began talking up gun control within hours of the Orlando attack. They elevated Donald Trump’s response to Orlando to top billing. And Obama turned his take on “radical Islam” into a big story. The media played along enthusiastically.
There’s no secret about what Obama and his allies are up to. It happens that terrorism is an issue that helps Republicans. It’s a 9/12 story. So the less a 9/10 president manages to talk about it, the better.
Fred Barnes is an executive editor at The Weekly Standard.
