Why Barack Obama still refuses to name it:
I don’t believe for a minute his (and Hillary Clinton’s) professed explanation—that naming our adversaries would only inflame them. How much more inflamed could they get? This weekend’s horrific event in Orlando is only the tip of a global iceberg. Not including the 50 (so far) dead from the Pulse gay bar shooting, there have been 60 documented attacks during this year’s Ramadan alone with 472 dead—and Ramadan is only seven days old (eight with Orlando). Total deadly terror attacks in the name of Allah since 9/11 now stand at 28,576 with who-knows-how-many corpses.
Nor, of course, do I think Obama was trying to do me a favor by promoting my book on moral narcissism coming out Tuesday, although the president is possibly the most morally narcissistic individual ever to inhabit the White House. He thinks he knows better than all of us—and the fruits of his moral narcissism are on the bloody floor of Pulse. (Gays should remember how Obama and Clinton “evolved” to favoring gay marriage, ten years or more after such Republicans as Arnold Schwarzenegger and, yes, Donald Trump. Knowing who your friends are is not always simple.)
No, Obama’s refusal to name radical Islam stems from two closely entwined factors—an enduring distaste for American power and deep personal shame (not that buried, but buried enough) of his own profound childhood connection to Islam. Not to get too psychoanalytic, to Obama, if there is something wrong with Islam, there is something wrong with him. Better to think there is something wrong with us.
Yup. Glenn Reynolds has related thoughts:
To prevent this sort of event in the future, we need to do several things.
First, interrupt the flow of radicalizing propaganda at the source: ISIL and various other jihadist outfits need to be neutralized or destroyed. These organizations pursue a deliberate strategy of radicalizing Muslims in Western countries to turn them into terrorists, and they operate networks of sympathizers throughout the USA. We used to cozy up to the Saudis, but thanks to hydraulic fracturing we don’t really need their oil anymore, so they need to be told to put a stop to this sort of support or else. We likely could have nipped ISIL in the bud a few years ago at minimal cost — or kept it from sprouting in the first place by maintaining a presence in Iraq — but it needs to be brought down now.
We also need to be clear about what it is we’re fighting. We’re not fighting Islam as such. Many good Muslims are horrified by this violence. But we are fighting the jihadist strain of Islam, and unfortunately quite a few Muslims view that strain as legitimate.
Yes. Millions of them. And as he notes, gun control, to the degree that it’s a solution at all, is a peacetime one. We are at war. And we’re all in the army now.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Memo to the gay community: ISIS is coming for us.
Yes. Which is one of the reasons it’s so stupid for the LGBTs so support “Palestinians” (who’d be happy to shove them into the sea with the Jews) over Israel.
[Update a while later]
First link was wrong, fixed now. Sorry!