3 December 2015

Obama botches California rampage response

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President Obama is dealing with another case of domestic terrorism, while all 14 Republicans who want to replace him in the oval office were gathering nearby in Washington, DC to appeal for support among Jewish voters especially for their vision of American foreign policy.

Mr. Obama, as ever, has a hard time with the facts, especially when it seems clear that the shooting spree that left 14 people dead in San Bernadino, California was caused by two homegrown Islamic radicals. In his Oval Office statement to reporters a day after the attack, Mr. Obama wanted to push motives off to the side. “We do know that the two individuals who were killed were equipped with weapons and appeared to have access to additional weaponry in their homes. But we don’t know why they did it.” He suggested that it could have been a case of workplace violence as opposed to terror and that the real threat to Americans security is too-easy access to firearms. Presumably, the president has access to more information than mere journalists and yet National Review’s Jim Geraghty was right when he pointed out how wrong Mr. Obama is to blame guns. “Short of nationwide mandatory confiscation of all firearms from civilians, no gun law would have prevented this,” Geraghty wrote.

This line of thinking is just the latest example of Mr. Obama’s tendency to speak of the world as he conceives it rather than as it is. Earlier in the week he was urging us all to ignore the reality of Islamist terror (from Paris of all places) in favor of his perception that global temperatures are a much more pressing threat.

As Mr. Obama was making his remarks at the White House, at the same hour, all the Republican presidential contenders were vying for Jewish support by speaking before an audience convened by the Republican Jewish Coalition.

The Washington Post’s Jenifer Rubin says Marco Rubio hit it out of the park, especially when he made the Reagan-Thatcher-like observation that this is an ideological fight. “This enemy hates our two nations — both liberal democracies, both products of the Judeo-Christian tradition — for the exact same reasons. And the first requirement of fighting for our common security is standing together. We must not separate the threat to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv from the threat to Paris, or London, or New York, or Miami.”

Rubio was equally forceful about the normalizing of anti-Semitism at the European Union. “The E.U. is singling out only Israel. Let’s take a step back and realize what this means. Discriminatory laws that apply only to Jews are now being written into European law for the first time in more than half a century. I believe we need a president who is not afraid to call this out for what it is: anti-Semitism. I will be that president.”

Given the hoots and long applause, the crowd of Jewish Republicans obviously appreciated both Rubio’s linkage of US and Israeli interests with his denunciation of anti-Israel bigotry.

Ted Cruz who appeared first seems to have been having an off day as he spoke about trying to keep dictators like Syria’s Bashar Assad in power for the “stability” they provide in the region. Assad is a “bad man” who has “murdered hundreds of thousands of his own citizens,” Cruz admitted, even as he argued that toppling him would be “materially worse for U.S. national security interests.” But while this sort of thinking goes back at least 40 years about the utility of supporting Middle East dictators as a form of realpolitik, it seems inappropriate in the current moment, and certainly among the crowd. On the other hand, Cruz did have Mr. Obama’s number in regards his unwillingness to name and reject Jihadism. “The United States of America should not be trying to rationalize radical Islamic terrorism.”

Donald Trump meanwhile couldn’t weave any magic when speaking to a knowledgeable crowd complaining “You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money.” And as David Weigel pointed out, he refused to rank the threat of Islamic terrorism, though he did take a neat swipe at President Obama. “The one thing I know is it isn’t global warming,” Trump declared.

Abby W. Schachter is US editor of CapX.