In a telling interview with the New Yorker, President Barack Obama compared Al-Qaeda-linked militants in Iraq and Syria to junior varsity basketball players, downplaying their threat as small-league.
One of the president’s campaign slogans was that, “Osama bin Laden is dead, GM is alive and Al-Queda is on the run.” New Yorker editor David Remnick pointed out to the president that the Al Qaeda flag is now seen flying in Falluja in Iraq and in certain locations in Syria, and thus the terrorist group has not been “decimated” contrary to the slogan.
“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama told Remnick. “I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often sectarian.”
The president’s comments are telling. They expose a naive view of the world that does not see the truth of what is happening in the world around us. It is all but impossible to win a war if you do not correctly understand your enemy. Even worse if you do not see the enemy as the enemy.
“I do believe that the region is going through rapid change and inexorable change. Some of it is demographics; some of it is technology; some of it is economics. And the old order, the old equilibrium, is no longer tenable. The question then becomes, What’s next?” Obama added.
There is the problem right there. You cannot make an effective plan to move forward without a correct understanding of the problem. The president is allowing a fundamental transformation of the Middle East and the world.
There are reports that Iran and Al-Queda are making inroads into South America presumably a staging ground for an American incursion. This is not an alarmist point of view, it is happening. But because this president either does not take the war on terror seriously or because he has affections for the Islamic religion, he has disengaged America from those that would do us harm.
