Another Failure of Leading from Behind

As the Tuesday [ASEAN] meeting ended, people briefed on the matter said discord emerged over how the proceedings should be presented to the public—between China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, and among ASEAN members themselves.

Indeed, no official post-meeting statement was produced, as is usual for international meetings.  Several participants issued their own statements, and Indonesia canceled a joint appearance with the PRC representative.  The PRC—not an ASEAN member—even presumed to instruct the participants that whatever ASEAN might say could not be the official ASEAN comment.

We’re not a member of ASEAN, but as a Pacific nation, we certainly could—and should—exercise a measure of influence and help.  But this administration doesn’t want to engage here, either.

Obama’s High Dudgeon

A carefully manufactured one, too.  The Wall Street Journal has an accurate read on President Barack Obama’s (D) constructed ire.

“For a while now the main contribution of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have made in the fight against ISIL is to criticize this Administration and me for not using the phrase ‘radical Islam,'” Mr Obama said Tuesday, using his preferred acronym for Islamic State.  “That’s the key, they tell us.  We cannot beat ISIL unless we call them ‘radical Islamists.’ What exactly would using this label accomplish?  What exactly would it change?”

Since the President asked, allow us to answer.  …  If the US is under attack, Americans deserve to hear their President say exactly who is attacking us and why.  You cannot effectively wage war, much less gauge an enemy’s strengths, without a clear idea of who you are fighting.

Mr Obama’s refusal to speak of “radical Islam” also betrays his failure to understand the sources of Islamic State’s legitimacy and thus its allure to young Muslim men.  The threat is religious and ideological.

Obama also said this:

Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. … There’s no magic to the phrase of radical Islam.  It’s a political talking point.

And yet, here he is, making it a political talking point.  As well as repeating his lack of understanding of what our enemy is and so preventing himself from constructing a means of destroying it while also preventing Defense from constructing such a means and then acting on it.  As well as repeating his lack of understanding of why it’s important to accurately name our enemy.  The idea of accurately identifying our enemy is not to “make it go away.”  It’s to help in accurately understanding our enemy so we can destroy it.

The term “radical Islam” plainly is extremely important to Obama, too, despite his emotional denial of the importance of it; his seven and a half year refusal to use the term to identify the terrorists demonstrates that.  His steadfast refusal to identify these terrorists, to say who they are, also says far more about his failure to do his duty regarding our nation’s safety, and it says far more about his level of immorality in that failure than it says about any of his critics who decry his failure.

Talk about playing politics with terrorism.  Jeez.

Elections have consequences.

Never Let a Tragedy Go to Waste

Or a terrorist attack.

The debate over how to stop attacks like the terror massacre in Orlando erupted on the House floor late Monday as Democratic lawmakers loudly criticized House Speaker Paul Ryan (R, WI) and other GOP leaders for taking no action on the nation’s gun laws.

Instead of moving to enhance our nation’s and our citizens’ ability to protect ourselves collectively and individually against terrorist attacks, the Left has chosen to focus on their continued efforts to disarm us all.

More cynically, yet, the Left carefully elides the potential outcomes, the vastly reduced casualty count were at least some of the folks inside the bar armed, or were some of the passersby on the street outside the bar—and present well before the police could arrive—armed.  The one cop who happened to be on the scene could have been critically reinforced immediately, were there an armed populace present.

The disruption underscored the political divide in the wake of the attack, with many Democrats looking to tighten gun laws in response and Republicans looking to crack down on the strain of radical Islam that seemingly motivated the shooter.

Ryan also tried to hold a moment of silence out of respect for the Orlando terrorist victims, and many Democrats chose to walk out of the Chamber rather than honor those victims.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) justified the calculated insult to those victims:

…told reporters Democrats have “had enough” of moments of silence after mass shootings when Congress does not act to tighten gun laws.

This isn’t a misplaced set of priorities by the Left.  It’s their focus.  Terrorism, Muslim or otherwise, is not a concern of theirs, and the Orlando mass shooting wasn’t an act of terrorism.  Disarming us is the Left’s priority.  Armed American citizens is where the Left’s fevered fears lie.

Elections have consequences.

So Are They All

…the Left are all honorable people.  The Honorable Left says Muslims have nothing to do with terror.  Hillary Clinton tweeted a while ago that

Muslims have “nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.”

Of course, she’s changed her story now that the winds of politics are blowing in a different direction.

Here’s how deadly [sic] wrong she and her Left colleagues are about Muslims and terrorism:

A Muslim radical who was being investigated for terror ties stabbed a French police chief to death outside his home, then tortured the man’s wife in front of their toddler son—all while livestreaming his rampage on Facebook.

And

…[Larossi] Abballa, a French national with a prior terrorism conviction and ties to jihadists based in Pakistan, made a horrific appeal to his Facebook followers, writing, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with the boy.”

It’s true enough that the vast majority of Muslims aren’t terrorists.  But nothing to do with terrorism is a fantasy of the Left, borne of their dishonorable fear of calling a spade a spade.

Elections have consequences.

Crony Capitalism

Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff [Cheryl Mills] at the State Department had a Democratic donor with virtually no relevant experience appointed to a nuclear intelligence advisory board, according to a new report that also claims the aide tried to stall journalists examining his background.

And

[Rajiv K] Fernando, a Chicago securities trader, had been a fundraiser for Democratic candidates and a financial contributor to the Clinton Foundation and even traveled with Bill Clinton on a trip to Africa.  The board he was appointed to—the International Security Advisory Board—included nuclear scientists, members of Congress and former cabinet secretaries.

The ISA “advises” State’s Arms Control and International Security sub-secretariat, a section that does highly classified work because, pursuant to its “advice”-giving, it investigates nations like Russia, Pakistan, northern Korea and their arsenals and development plans.

Fernando had, supposedly, an unpaid position, but he also had that lack of qualification, and so he had no Need to Know.  And the spot puts him in well with any Clinton administration.

This is the sort of cronyism to which we can look forward, and it’s the new Ambassadorship-as-Reward.  Elections have consequences.