RUTHFULLY YOURS

U.S. President Barack Obama, as is well known at this point, elected not to attend the ‎mass rally in Paris on Sunday, where the victims of several incidents of mass ‎murder by radical Islamic terrorists were honored, and the principle of free speech ‎‎(and a free press) was defended. The president also did not send Vice President ‎Joe Biden to the event, a symbolic role that would have suited Biden, while he waits ‎for Hillary Clinton to announce her candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination ‎for president in 2016, thereby ending his political career and ambitions. Secretary ‎of State John Kerry was in India, and chose to stay there. Attorney General Eric ‎Holder was already in Paris, but apparently had more important things to do there ‎than show his face in public. The excuse for his failure to show up at the rally had ‎to do with attending meetings in the city. It is pretty likely that those with whom he ‎was meeting were not sitting around a table conferring while the rally took place. ‎

Of course, this was not Ferguson, Missouri. There the White House sent three ‎people to Michael Brown’s funeral, and had a lot more to say about his death than ‎it did about the murder of 17 innocents which occurred in Paris. The U.S. ambassador to France, a political appointee, ‎who was awarded this elite post for her service as a big Obama campaign bundler, ‎was the sole official U.S. representative at the rally which several million people ‎attended, including over 40 foreign leaders. Some are calling this embarrassing ‎‎”no show” by the president and his top team, Obama’s Katrina moment, a reference to ‎President George W. Bush flying over New Orleans after the hurricane hit, while praising the ‎efforts of his Federal Emergency Management Agency director. ‎

The White House caught on early that even some of its normal media defenders ‎were a bit put out by his nonappearance and seeming indifference to the event. ‎The first attempt at push back by the White House was to relay that the Secret ‎Service did not have enough time to prepare for the president’s participation in ‎such an event, especially with the risks associated with an open air march. ‎Somehow that same concern did not prevent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‎Netanyahu from showing up, and marching arm in arm with the leader of Mali, a ‎predominantly Muslim country in Africa, surely a scene which would agitate many ‎already radicalized French Muslims. ‎

The president had just completed a long Hawaiian vacation, with lots of golf and ‎gym workouts, and in his first week back in Washington had done three quick trips ‎to spotlight new “initiatives” he would try to sell in his upcoming State of the Union ‎address. These trips are more campaign appearances than substance, and usually ‎seem to energize the president. The argument that he was too fatigued for this ‎additional “grueling travel,” an excuse that was also offered up, proved to be a ‎nonstarter. ‎

My own view is that the timing of the rally was a particular problem for ‎Obama. The president admits to being a sports fan. This past weekend was one of ‎the key weekends of the year for football fans. The National Football League ‎divisional playoffs, with two games on both Saturday and Sunday, are a prime ‎attraction on the calendar each year for rabid sports fans. The president has ‎admitted on several occasions that he is more likely to watch ESPN, a 24-hour ‎sports channel, than cable news programs. Obama has shown up for more ‎interviews before big sporting events such as the Super Bowl than any prior ‎president. Obama has regularly discussed with sports broadcasters his ‎predictions for the annual college basketball tournament (the NCAA “brackets”), ‎and has honored more winning teams, college, professional and Little League, at the ‎White House than any prior president. This past Monday, the National Basketball ‎Association champion San Antonio Spurs were honored at the White House. The ‎likelihood that the president would “blow off” the football games to fly to and ‎march in Paris, was likely much lower than that he would blow off the march in ‎Paris, to watch the big games. ‎

But in addition to looking forward to a weekend of lounging around watching ‎football on TV (too cold for golf this time of year), the president was undoubtedly ‎uncomfortable with the themes of the Paris march, and the reminders of some of ‎his prior statements from two years earlier. In September 2012, following the ‎killings of four Americans at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the president ‎and his team were eager to blame the attack as well as violence in other Muslim ‎countries that occurred on September 11 of that year, on an anti-Muslim video ‎that no one in those countries had seen. That fabrication was maintained by Susan ‎Rice, the president’s U.N. ambassador, on a series of Sunday news programs. ‎Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, demonstrating her “free speech” credentials, ‎assured the families of the four dead Americans, that the filmmaker would be ‎arrested, which he then was, on trumped up charges. The president then went to ‎the United Nations and enthusiastically announced that “the future does not belong ‎to those who slander the Prophet Muhammad” http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/flashback-obama-2012-future-must-not-belong-those-who-slander-prophet-islam. Presumably libel of Muhammad was also not ‎good. ‎

The president of course never refers to Muhammad, but only “the Prophet ‎Muhammad,” an honor he reserves only for the founder of this religion, a practice ‎that has now been adopted by pretty much all of the media.‎ 

As Dennis Prager describes: “When Jesus is mentioned, the media never refer to ‎him as ‘Christ, the Lord’ or as ‘the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.’ Just ‘Jesus.’ In ‎fact, ‘A.D.’ (‘anno Domini’ — ‘year of our Lord’) has been completely dropped by ‎the very academics and media who always write ‘The Prophet Muhammad.’ 

“When the media discuss Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus ‎Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormon Church), they don’t refer to him as ‘the ‎Prophet Joseph Smith.’ Why not? Is there a single difference between his title and ‎roles in Mormonism and Muhammad’s in Islam? 

“‎And Jews refer to Moses as ‘Moshe Rabbeinu,’ Moses our Teacher. Why don’t the ‎media?”‎

The president was also never a big fan of Charlie Hebdo. “Je suis Charlie” simply ‎would not fit this president. In 2012, the White House was critical of the magazine’s ‎judgment in publishing satirical cartoons about “the Prophet Muhammad.” In the ‎inner circles of the White House this last week (meaning upstairs with the president, ‎first lady and Valerie Jarrett), there was undoubtedly a shared sentiment that the ‎French magazine had brought this latest horror on itself, and should show more ‎respect for Islam and “the Prophet Muhammad.” Free speech is fine so long as ‎Muslims do not take offense.‎

Current White House press secretary Josh Earnest argued this week that these ‎types of provocations (cartoons about Muhammad) endanger American servicemen ‎abroad. Presumably this is because it makes some Muslims angry, who then commit ‎violent acts. If endangering the safety of American servicemen abroad were really a ‎key consideration for the president and his team, taming the satire of Charlie Hebdo ‎would not be very high on the list of things they might do. ‎

The White House has been very careful to argue that no real (authentic?) Muslims ‎were among the people who were murdering to protect the good name of ‎Muhammad. These killers were nothing more than a few violent extremists who ‎put the good name of Islam at risk and were perverting ‎the religion. Protecting that good name seems to have become a primary objective ‎of the White House. The administration ‎appears to have adopted a policy to forbid the use of the two connected words: ‎‎”radical Islam“. ‎

This suggests a narrative that has to be protected by this White House. Above all, ‎Islam is peaceful. All that stuff going on with Boko Haram, or ISIS, or the attacks in ‎Paris, or on 9/11 (choose the year), are not connected to Islam, but only to a false ‎interpretation of the faith by some troubled people. The president wants new ‎relations between America and the Muslim world. And he clearly wants many more ‎Muslim immigrants to come to America, to help change this nation. More than ‎‎100,000 legal Muslim immigrants are now coming each year to the United States, a ‎far higher percentage of all legal immigrants than has ever been the case. The ‎president is counting on few if any of them becoming those lone wolves, or ‎workplace violence offenders (Major Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood) or joining up with groups like ‎ISIS abroad. ‎

There is an old joke that there are two kinds of people in the world — those who believe ‎there are two kinds of people, and those who don’t. But at this moment, it is not ‎unreasonable to argue there are two kinds of people with regard to making sense of ‎what has gone on the past week. There are those who think radical Islam is a ‎problem that needs to be addressed by Muslims and Western governments, and those who think there is no such thing as radical ‎Islam, and who claim that thinking otherwise is nothing more than Islamophobia. The fact ‎that even an Obama shill such as Tom Friedman appears to have temporarily joined ‎the camp of those who think radical Islam is a problem, demonstrates how isolated ‎Obama is on this issue. For we know where the president stands on this one, or as ‎the case may be, where he sits while watching football games.‎