RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Obama’s so proud of his new National Security Strategy that the White House released it on the eve of a holiday weekend — when everybody in Washington’s racing for the beach, the ‘burbs or a bunker.

With good reason.  This isn’t a strategy.  It’s a stump speech.

If you want to know what details of a document really matter to any administration, don’t obsess on the text itself.  Listen to the roll-out speeches by the White House sales reps.

Remarks by terror czar John Brennan and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made it painfully clear that it isn’t only our Gulf Coast shoreline that’s threatened by this administration’s ineptitude and genius for self-delusion.

But Hillary only offered the standard boilerplate about the primacy of diplomacy and development in solving security problems.  (Terrific!  Let’s bring all the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan immediately and let the State Department and NGOs sort things out…).

But Brennan, in full tin-foil-hat mode, was downright scary.  Speaking on Wednesday, he even praised the administration’s response to the BP oil disaster.  Jeez…sycophancy should have legal limits.

Brennan was prepping the pundits on the terrorism side of the NSS.  Except that it’s not really terrorism, you see.  And it’s certainly not Islamist terrorism or a jihad.  Brennan spent an alarming amount of time on indirect apologies to Muslims.  As in:

“Nor do we describe our enemy as jihadists or Islamists because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community.”

What? Does this administration really believe that it gets to re-define jihad?  Sounds like one of its pet Muslim “experts” worked on the speech.  But trust me: When Osama says al-Qaeda’s waging jihad, Muslims believe him, not White-Bread John Brennan.

And by the way: Jihad in Islam usually means aggressive holy war to kill and subjugate infidels.  Check the Islamic texts (you know, the ones Muslims read).  And there’s no pope in Islam who gets to give claims of jihad a thumbs up or down.  If the local yokels declare a jihad, it’s a jihad, boys and girls.

Don’t facts matter at all to this administration?  I guess the 9/11 terrorists were just purifying themselves and their community.

The speech got worse.  Speaking of the Israel-Palestine situation, Brennan employed coded left-wing language when he said that “legitimate grievances can be resolved peacefully through…dialogue.”

In case you missed it, only the Palestinians have “legitimate grievances.”  Then Brennan invoked Obama’s blame-America Cairo speech as at least the equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount.  Okay, Big John: Where are the results?  Iran?  Hezbollah?  Hamas?  Al-Qaeda?  The Taliban?  Syria?

Of course, he called for “collective action,” another left-wing buzz-phrase.  Well, how’s all that collective action been going for this White House?  Got tough sanctions on Iran yet?  Or on North Korea?  Anybody notice that the Bush administration (boo, hiss, shame!) had more allies fighting beside us in Iraq than Obama has in Afghanistan?

Of course, Brennan, who’s turned into a shameless bootlicker, didn’t miss a chance to hammer Bush-Cheney, the true axis of evil.  As in his claim that his team is “responsibly ending the war in Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11.”

Well, the first point’s doubtful, while the last point depends on whether you’re a little-picture or big-picture thinker.  What’s indisputable is that the invasion did lead to the most catastrophic defeat al-Qaeda has yet suffered, when millions of Sunni Muslims turned on the terrorists.  No mention of that, of course.

Things grew even shabbier when Brennan—our top terrorism guy—spoke of “the senseless slaughter of 13 innocent Americans at Ft. Hood” as if they had been killed by space invaders.  No mention of Major Hasan, Anwar al-Alaqi, shouts of “Allah is great!” or jihad.

Tireless—at least behind a microphone–Brennan went back to stressing the importance of “international partnerships.”  Great.  We’re all with you, Big John.  But with who?  The allies Obama has stiffed?  Or was our terror czar speaking of Obama’s unprecedented success in engaging Iran, North Korea, Russia, China and his Venezuelan hug-buddy, Hugo Chavez?

Of course, Breanna didn’t say one word about the terror on our border with Mexico or in our illegal-immigrant-gang-plagued cities.  Nope, our problem’s just with al-Qaeda.  None of whose members are Islamists or jihadists.

Guess I ought to check out the Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Bahais and others in line down at the al-Qaeda recruiting office volunteering to purify their neighborhoods.

Our new National Security Strategy isn’t about security for our nation.  It’s about making our enemies feel good about themselves.  Sure, Brennan said we were going to get al-Qaeda.  But he made it clear that neither he nor our president is willing to recognize what al-Qaeda is.

Of course, that probably depends on what you definition of “is” is.

Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War.”