Blowing in the Wind

The San Bernardino Massacre was serious enough to compel the president to address the nation from the (gasp) Oval Office though not as any fireside chat a la FDR of WWII fame or even of Jimmy Carter in his sweater. No...that wouldn't be good enough for the commander-in-chief. The podium with the presidential seal was brought in so the great unwashed could recognize royalty when they saw it...none of that sitting behind a desk stuff.

The president apparently has assumed that the citizens are all cringing in their cellars in the aftermath of the massacre and so must be reassured that he is doing everything possible to see to the collective saftety. In that regard, he introduced no new information, just mostly reiterated what the country is already doing, especially intelligence-wise, to forestall another butchering. What he didn't say was that another such jihad caper could happen anywhere anytime and pulled off by people totally off the radar.

This is what happened at San Bernardino. A couple with a six-month-old baby decided to do the massacre thing, dropped the baby off with its grandmother, loaded their materiel—quite an arsenal—and did the martyr thing while in the process murdering 14 and wounding a number of others before being shot to death themselves, making them fit for the best Paradise (or at least the nearest ayatollah) can offer. They were just your average young couple next door. This could happen anywhere, notwithstanding anything the president said.

These people are already in the country, many of them already apprehended...but not all. The Marathon Bombers were just two brothers, one with a wife and child and the other a college student. The younger chickened out on the martyr thing and accepted arrest but the older shot-it-out and set off for Paradise and the 72 virgins as if such a place exists. The two unsuccessful airliner bombers and the unsuccessful Times Square bomber—whether stupid or chicken—could have killed hundreds if they had detonated their devices. They were off the radar, too, so the president can't crow too loudly about intel.

The president finally got to what the speech was all about. When the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright, the president's spiritual guru, became a problem for him, Obama gave a speech in 2008 in Philadelphia, tagged a speech on race, but it was actually an apologetic for Wright. He did the same vis-a-vis the massacre, i.e., tried to convince the public that Muslims are just plain ordinary citizens, nothing to worry about.

He sold the citizens short. By now, the citizens understand that the holy book of Islam, as attested to by Islamic officials, calls for the death or enslavement of infidels, practically all Americans. He finally threw Wright under the bus but not until the minister had exhibited his hatred of the U.S. vehemently on nationwide TV in a speech at the National Press Club. Now, even though the president was raised in a Muslim household, he needs to throw Islam under the bus, once and for all, denounce it as not a religion but as a violent cult begun by Mohammad in the seventh century and kept alive by radicalized “non-religionists” through the ages.

This would do no violence to Muslims themselves, who, as the president noted, are collectively peaceful; however, strict allegiance to Islam and to its leaders makes them enemies of the state on the basis of their declared marching orders as outlined in the Quran, their holy book. Some become radicalized like the Farooks of San Bernardino, meaning that others (next-door neighbors) could be just as radicalized, following the holy book. Allah Akbar, as shouted in some of the killings, like Ft. Hood, make these killings the absolute outgrowth of allegiance to the Quran. The president won't say it, but the problem is Islam.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark