Obama Speaks, The Heart Sinks

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P J Media: Obama Speaks, The Heart Sinks

May 24th, 2013 - 8:47 pm

by Michael Ledeen

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He’s actually getting worse. This president will not admit that we are in a war, as President George W. Bush defined it, with various terrorist organizations and with countries that support them. In his overlong, rambling speech to the National Defense University on terrorism and national security, the president never even mentioned Iran, which happens to be our main enemy and the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism. Not one word.

 

You may well ask how it is possible for the president to talk about his counterterrorism “strategy” without addressing the main source of terrorism. You would be right to ask, and you should also ask how it is possible that, so far as I can see, not one of the pundits, experts and commentators noticed the omission. They were so busy with the future of Gitmo and where captured terrorists should be tried, and how many drones can fit on the head of a jihadi, that they missed the biggest thing.

 

Talk about a dog that didn’t bark!

The speech was bizarre, to put it mildly. It was often incoherent,

But President Obama could not bring himself to mention that. Indeed, the one time he used the words “violent jihad” he wasn’t talking about the Quds Force, or Hezbollah, or Islamic Jihad, or the other terrorist organizations. He was talking about–listen very carefully–”radicalized individuals here in the United States.” Yes, if we take the text seriously, he’s saying that violent jihad is a homegrown American thing.

 

well its not hard for me to believe looking at his track record a long with D. H. S. statement on returning Veterans

 

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24May

4

President Obama’s Counterterrorism Policy Speech Yesterday: “Let me be unclear…”

By: Wordsmith

Just a roundup of a few analyses by others of the president’s counterterrorism policies speech that I believe are notable and astute; namely, two writers at Lawfare Blog (a series of posts by Benjamin Wittes and one post by John Bellinger).

Benjamin Wittes, Pt1 reaction:

 

If there was a unifying theme of President Obama’s speech today at the National Defense University, it was an effort to align himself as publicly as possible with the critics of the positions his administration is taking without undermining his administration’s operational flexibility in actual fact. To put it crassly, the president sought to rebuke his own administration for taking the positions it has—but also to make sure that it could continue to do so.

 

A great deal of the President’s speech was noise—noise in the form of broad, overarching accounts of his strategic vision, noise in the form of continuous veiled (or not-so-veiled) criticisms of his predecessor’s strategic vision and fidelity to American values, and noise in the form of apparent changes in policy that in actual fact change very little.

http://floppingaces.net/2013/05/24/president-obamas-counterterrorism-policy-speech-yesterday-let-me-be-unclear/