President Obama in his speech on "The War on Terror" has shown once and for all that he does not consider Islamic terror to be a strategic threat on the United States. Despite the City of Boston still reeling from the effects of a major Islamic terror attack only weeks ago, and the bloody hands captured by camera of an Islamic terrorist after he savagely and barbarically beheaded a British soldier in the center of London for all the world to see only days earlier, Obama stated that he will not use the massive resources of the United States to end once and for all the Islamic terror threat on the American people.
“Lethal yet less capable al-Qaeda affiliates. Threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad. Homegrown extremists. This is the future of terrorism,” the president told his audience at the National Defense University in Washington. “If dealt with smartly and proportionally, these threats need not rise to the level that we saw on the eve of 9/11.” In other words, Al-Qaeda will be able in the name of Islamic jihad to mount deadly local attacks on American soil, such as in Boston and the American public should get used to living with terror. This is really the only logical conclusion. This attempt to diminish real and potential enemies was the heart of Obama’s speech, and the mayhem in the name of jihad, as we saw in Boston is the future of terrorism, so get used to it.
Many in the American public saw in Obama's speech a message of defeat and retreat as far as the War on Terror is concerned. Perhaps the most worrisome thing that Obama said was his wistful embrace of a pre-9/11 world when we supposedly treated terrorism in its proper proportion, yet he conveniently forgot that during the 1980s, hundreds of American lives were lost to terrorism at the American Embassy in Beirut; at a military Marine Barracks in Lebanon; on a cruise ship at sea; at a disco in Berlin; and on a Pan Am flight — Flight 103 — over Lockerbie. In the 1990s, thousands of American lives were lost at the World Trade Center; in military facilities in Saudi Arabia; and at the American Embassy in Kenya. These attacks were all brutal; they were all deadly, and left unchecked as they were, they have brought upon the American public the need to live today with terror on the streets of America,.
This attempt to distinguish between the nature of Islamic terror and the threat from "radicalized" individuals will only invite future Islamic terror in the future. Denying a significant connection between the bloody Boston terror attack and Islamic jihadism is like saying that the Boston bombers operated out of a sense of alienation, and that for them Jihad was nothing more than a label, a brand name or logo no different than the Yankee insignia on a baseball cap.
Obama and much of the political and media elites in particular are in denial when it comes to understanding Islamism. They don’t listen when they are told why people commit terror attacks and they hope that if they continue to keep their fingers in their ears, it’ll go away, but unfortunately it doesn’t. Denying the connection between Islam and violence will not make it go away, and will only facilitate a sense of helplessness on the part of the American public. So the question that begs to be asked is how much more bloodshed is needed for Obama before he stops denying what most of us feel and know about the danger inherent in Islamic ideology.
Obama”s misunderstanding of and his failure to limit future actions against Islamic terrorism is due to his and his administrations mindset that views Islamic terrorism as a response to specific causes whether it be politically or ideologically motivated. The danger of associating terrorism to grievances and causes is that it rationalizes murder and justifies those who perpetrate it. Islamic terrorists, who plan and train meticulously murderous attacks don't seek political compromises; their goal is Jihad, total elimination of all those who are non-Muslims, they are committed to the annihilation of their enemies.
Whether they are home-grown or imported, Islamic terror attacks must be understood for what they are, a continuation of the global jihad, acts of endless hate against Western Civilization. From London to Boston, from Madrid to Tel Aviv, the killers and terrorists are united in their ideology, their goals and their techniques. We must not get used to the moral burden of living with terror.