Don's Tuesday Column

                  THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   8/02/2016

                 Obama’s clueless on radical Islam

There are some revealing, even disturbing, aspects of the curious but adamant stance on domestic Islamic terrorism apparently adopted by Barack Obama. I write this in June but Obama’s policies will be with Americans until a new president is sworn in. I hope at this point it will be Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton because I would have far greater trust in his instincts rather than the Clinton record you’ve read about in the last 2 columns.

Recall, if you will, the phony controversy over what Obama derisively called “magic words”; he said, “There’s no magic to the phrase ‘radical Islam.’ It’s a talking point.” I doubt even his defenders can dismiss the idea that Islamic radicalism is what guides and motivates widespread terrorism, faced with airport bombings, mass murder with guns or, as we’ve seen in Israel, Germany and China, slaughter with knives, axes and machetes.

Obama, media elites and the politically correct devotees of inoffensive conclusions can shut their eyes, plug their ears and close their mouths about the subject. However, the most revered, knowledgeable and authoritative imams and Islamic scholars in the world are exponents of the extremist, shariah-adhering death-to-infidels branch of “the religion of peace.”

Granted, most Muslims that come to America, certainly large numbers in Muslim-majority nations, adhere to the precepts of Islam that make them responsible American citizens and non-threatening members of the human race. And yet, some of their offspring—as well schooled and comfortably middle class as they may be—find inspiration on the Internet and its ready access to those preaching the other, the violent terrorism-fomenting kind of Islam. It is not an insane, an aberrant, nor an extremist splinter of their faith.

The above observations should not be controversial, but should rather constitute a base of proper understanding of the enemy terrorizing our nation and the world with dozens of attacks over the last year. However, it is demonstrably not Obama’s understanding and should be the cause, not for conspiracy theories, but for dispassionate analysis of why his approach has failed to protect us.

Much can be learned about Obama’s mindset from “The Obama Doctrine,” by Jeffrey Goldberg. Goldberg made the case that the president almost pathologically refuses to view the threats posed by these incidents as major national-security issues:

“He (Obama) has never believed that terrorism poses a threat to America commensurate with the fear it generates. Even during the period in 2014 when ISIS was executing its American captives in Syria, his emotions were in check. Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s closest adviser, told him people were worried that the group would soon take its beheading campaign to the U.S. ‘They’re not coming here to chop our heads off,’ he reassured her.

“Obama frequently reminds his staff that terrorism takes far fewer lives in America than handguns, car accidents, and falls in bathtubs. Several years ago, he expressed to me his admiration for Israelis’ ‘resilience’ in the face of constant terrorism, and it is clear that he would like to see resilience replace panic in American society. Nevertheless, his advisers are fighting a constant rearguard action to keep Obama from placing terrorism in what he considers its ‘proper’ perspective, out of concern that he will seem insensitive to the fears of the American people.”

John Podhoretz: “Of course, they are coming here to chop our heads off, only they’re not doing it one by one with kidnapped Americans. They’re shooting up their fellow workers in San Bernardino and a bar in Orlando (DP: and soldiers at Fort Hood and Chattanooga). They may or may not be under foreign direction, but they are self-proclaimed jihadists.”

Then look up “How Not to Counter Domestic Terrorism,” by Paul Mirengoff (6/16). It places the “Countering Violent Extremism (CVE)” program in perspective as it reflects the Obama doctrine. You might not be surprised, given its title, to find that CVE has nothing to do with Islamic terrorism. It makes no mention of the term, asserts that some Muslims can be paid to argue with other Muslims on social media, and reduces terrorism from a military problem to a law enforcement issue or even a civilian social problem. The Muslim Brotherhood, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Society of North America and ISIS are no doubt grateful.

Daniel Greenfield: “CVE not only doesn’t fight terrorism, it perpetuates the whole reason for it by outsourcing our interaction with domestic Muslims to the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s a big part of how we got a terrorism problem in the first place. CVE’s promoters have convinced us that the best way to fight Islamic terrorism is by partnering with Islamic terrorists…

“A sensible counter terrorism strategy at home will not aim at parsing different flavors of Islam, but at distinguishing between those citizens whose allegiance we have and those whose allegiance we do not…CVE rejects the idea that Muslims should be expected to show their allegiance [to the U.S.] and instead demands that the United States show its allegiance to them. It inverts the balance of citizenship and invests the United States in an unspoken religious debate.”

Former NSA analyst and counterintelligence officer John Schindler wrote a column, “The Road to Orlando,” describing what he witnessed in Obama’s first term: “a thorough purge of personnel in the Intelligence Community and the Defense Department who were unwilling to follow the new party line.” Obama’s policies, agencies, his obedient staff, and sycophants in government, his party and news media have given us dead Americans from Islamic terrorists.