Does Obama really think it can’t happen here?
Mouthpieces for the Obama administration spent part of their weekend news junket telling America it’s unlikely that ISIS could stage a Paris-style attack on U.S. soil. Almost everyone who’s not on the White House payroll immediately disagreed.
Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said that the Islamic State’s terrorist aspirations on U.S. soil makes for an apples-and-oranges comparison, viewed alongside the spectacular attack last week in Paris.
Rhodes “told reporters that one big difference between the situation in Europe and that in the U.S. is that ‘thousands’ of fighters have traveled to Syria and then returned to Europe,” reports CNN. “The number being tracked in America is far smaller — around 40, according to an estimate by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper earlier this year.”
In a syndicated report, CNN said the Obama administration is trying to assure Americans that ISIS’ ability to stage a large-scale, coordinated attack in the United States “is limited.”
As soon as those statements went public, everyone from law enforcement to members of the mainstream press — including CNN’s own Jake Tapper, who interviewed Rhodes — did a double-take.
“If this is what ISIS looks like ‘contained,’ I shudder to think what ISIS looks like ‘uncontained,’” said Tapper, referencing President Obama’s unfortunately timed remarks, given only a day before last Friday’s attack. “We don’t seem to be one step ahead of any terrorist group these days.”
New York police commissioner Bill Bratton, who knows a thing or two about working under a progressive leftist administration, said Monday he doesn’t buy the White House line that ISIS can’t wreak massive violence on Americans where they live.
“[D]o you disagree with the White House, who this past weekend seemed to say that an attack on the United States wasn’t possible?” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough asked Bratton. “They [the Obama administration] said they [ISIS] didn’t have the capability to attack here.”
“Oh, I don’t believe that,” Bratton replied. “We work every day based on the premise that they have that capability. What we just saw in Paris, why do we think that wouldn’t happen here?”
Obama has been stubbornly reluctant to acknowledge the Islamic State’s reach. He sniped at a reporter Monday for asking whether the president really understands the Islamic State “well enough to defeat them and to protect the homeland,” and continues to emphasize a “hate the sin; not the sinner” approach to Islamist extremism.
But naming the enemy — as well as its ideology — and recognizing his ability to cause harm is nothing but simple good sense, as Examiner’s Kareem Grant observed Monday.
It’s “not fear mongering” to admit that to the American people, writes Grant; it’s “simply stating the facts, because the fact of the matter is that terrorist groups like ISIS and Boko Haram, the group responsible for killing 2,000 people in Nigeria, are becoming a dangerous threat to the world, and it’s time to stop living in a land of false comfort and acknowledge this threat.”
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