It’s inspiring when a leader meets a moment and takes charge. President Obama didn’t come close to doing that Sunday night in his Oval Office speech.
If it wasn’t a letdown to most Americans, that’s only because their expectations were so low. Obama’s streak of failing to come to grips with the terrorist threat, both substantively and rhetorically, remains intact.
He retreated to a euphemism to assess the menace of ISIS. He said it’s “evolving.” Please, Mr. President, it’s growing in front of your eyes – in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and, most alarmingly of all, here at home.
We’ve now had two bloody attacks – in Paris and last week’s slaying of 14 Americans in San Bernardino, California. The president’s response is to change his anti-terrorist strategy not a whit. Yet he insists he’s confident we’ll defeat ISIS and other terrorists, as if those words are reassuring. Coming from our commander in chief, they’re scary.
There are so many reassuring things he could have said. I’m dramatically increasing the number and intensity of air strikes against ISIS in Iran and Syria. I’m halting my plan to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo and free the incorrigible jihadists no country is willing to take. I’m putting on hold the Syrian refugee program until we developed a process of vetting the refugees in a tougher, unforgiving, and as foolproof as possible way. We heard none of that last night.
There were two surprises, at least for me. I assumed Obama wouldn’t allow his obsession with gun control to force its way into his address. I was wrong. Dwelling on gun control was entirely out of place since nothing the president and his allies are proposing would have prevented the San Bernardino terrorists from acquiring their weapons.
And I suspected he’d spare us another rendition of his tale of a wave of vicious discrimination against innocent Muslims in this country. Instead he dwelled on it, though the wave is nonexistent. This matter received a “rather disproportionate” amount of time in the speech, Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News. That was an understatement.
Americans have two things to worry about. One is that ISIS killings in America will continue. The other is that Obama will refuse again to grab the moment and fail to understand the peril and lead us out of it.
