Tell me: What’s a suicide bomber doing with a passport? He’s not
going anywhere. And, though I’m not a religious scholar, I doubt that a
passport is required in paradise for a martyr to access his 72 black-eyed
virgins.
A Syrian passport was found near the body of one of the
terrorists. Why was it there? Undoubtedly, to back up the ISIS boast that it is
infiltrating operatives amid the refugees flooding Europe. The passport may
have been fake, but the terrorist’s fingerprints were not.
They match those of a man who just a month earlier had come through Greece on
his way to kill Frenchmen in Paris.
If the other goal of the Paris massacre was to frighten France
out of the air campaign in Syria — the way Spain withdrew from the
Iraq war after the terrorist attack on its trains in 2004 — they picked the
wrong country. France is a serious post-colonial power, as demonstrated in Ivory Coast, the Central African Republic and Mali, which France saved from an
Islamist takeover in 2013.
Indeed, socialist President François Hollande has responded
furiously to his country’s 9/11 with an intensified air campaign, hundreds of raids on
suspected domestic terrorists, a state of emergency and proposed changes in the
constitution to make France less hospitable to jihad.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama, titular head of the free world, has
responded to Paris with weariness and annoyance. His news conference in Turkey
was marked by a stunning tone of passivity, detachment and lassitude,
compounded by impatience and irritability at the very suggestion that his Syria
strategy might be failing.
The only time he showed any passion was in denouncing
Republicans for hardheartedness toward Muslim refugees. One hundred and
twenty-nine innocents lie dead, but it takes the GOP to kindle Obama’s ire.
The rest was mere petulance, dismissing criticisms of his
Syria policy as popping off. Inconveniently for Obama, one of those
popper-offers is Dianne Feinstein, the leading Democrat on the Senate
Intelligence Committee. She directly contradicted Obama’s blithe assertion,
offered the day before the Paris attack, that the Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIL)
was contained and not gaining strength. “I have never been more concerned,” said Feinstein. “ISIL is not contained. ISIL is expanding.”
Obama defended his policy by listing
its multifaceted elements. Such as, “I hosted at the United Nations an entire
discussion of counterterrorism strategies and curbing the flow of foreign
fighters.” An “entire” discussion, mind you. Not a partial one. They tremble in
Raqqa.
And “We have mobilized 65 countries to go after ISIL.” Yes, and
what would we do without Luxembourg?
Obama complained of being criticized for not being bellicose
enough. But the complaint is not about an absence of bellicosity but about an
absence of passion, of urgency and of commitment to the fight. The air campaign
over Syria averages seven strikes a day. Seven. In Operation Desert Storm, we flew1,100 sorties a day. Even in the Kosovo campaign, we averaged 138. Obama is
doing just enough in Syria to give the appearance of motion, yet not nearly
enough to have any chance of success.
Obama’s priorities lie elsewhere. For example, climate change,
which he considers the greatest “threat to
our future.” And, of course,
closing Guantanamo. Obama actually released
five detainees on the day after the Paris
massacre. He is passionate about Guantanamo. It’s a great terrorist recruiting
tool, he repeatedly explains. Obama still seems to believe that — even as ISIS
has produced an astonishing wave of terrorist recruitment with a campaign of
brutality, butchery and enslavement filmed in living color. Who can still
believe that young Muslims are leaving Europe to join the Islamic State because
of Guantanamo?
Obama’s other passion is protecting Islam from any possible
association with “violent extremism.” The Islamic State is nothing but “killers
with fantasies of glory.” Obama can never bring himself to acknowledge why
these people kill and willingly die: to advance a radical Islamist
millenarianism that is purposeful, indeed eschatological — and appealing enough
to have created the largest, most dangerous terrorist movement on Earth.
Hollande is trying to gather a real coalition to destroy the
Islamic State, even as Obama touts his phony 65. For 11 post-World
War II presidencies, coalition leading has been the role of the United States.
Where is America today? Awaiting a president. The next president.
