As usual, the President and his admirers miss the point!

from The Gray Area:

At the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning, President Obama made a speech in which he pointed out that it would be foolish to blame Islam, at large, for its atrocities. To make this point he noted that using religion to brutalize other people is neither a Muslim invention nor, in America, a foreign one. Specifically he said:

Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.

The response to President Obama’s comparison of islamic terrorists and Christianity was quick and fierce from the right.

– Robert Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas and the author of the upcoming book, “Countdown to the Apocalypse: Why ISIS and Ebola Are Only the Beginning,” said there are two problems with Obama’s comparison. 1. “When Christians act violently they are acting in opposition to the teachings of their founder, Jesus Christ”. 2. “They cannot cite a single verse in the New Testament that calls for violence against unbelievers. On the other hand, radical Islamists can point to a number of verses in the Koran calling for Muslims to ‘crucify the infidels.’”

– Michelle Malkin put it nicely: “ISIS chops off heads, incinerates hostages, kills gays, enslaves girls. Obama: Blame the Crusades,” she tweeted.

– Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan fumed at Obama comparing the extreme barbarity of ISIS to the Crusades. “He’s trying to give them all equivalence to what happened in the 11th century to what’s happening today? It’s astonishing,” Buchanan said. “The whole idea of the Inquisition in Spain – I mean these things are hundreds of years ago. That was a 30-year war long, long ago.” “I can’t think of any atrocities that have really been committed in the name of Christ … There’s no justification anywhere in all the books of the New Testament for any kind of violence on the scale of what we just saw with that Jordanian pilot.” Buchanan said Obama has a “real problem with the cold hard truth and reality of our times” regarding terrorism. … “Can the president not see the reality of his own time that he’s got to retreat centuries to find what he thinks might be a moral equivalence?”

– Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said “the president should apologize for his insulting comparison.”

– Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, a Republican, said Obama’s remarks were “the most offensive I’ve ever heard a President make in my lifetime.”

The President’s admirers on the left presented this defense:

– The Foolish, Historically Illiterate, Incredible Response to Obama’s Prayer Breakfast Speech. That this relatively mild, and correct, point cannot be made without the comments being dubbed, “the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime,” by a former Virginia governor gives you some sense of the limited tolerance for any honest conversation around racism in our politics.

– Obama’s remarks spoke to his unsparing, sometimes controversial, view of the United States — where triumphalism is often overshadowed by a harsh assessment of where Americans must try harder to live up to their own self-image. Only by admitting these shortcomings, he has argued, can we fix problems and move beyond them.

While each of these articles recite accurately, specific civil war and slavery era atrocities, they do not put the events being compared into perspective, or answer the question, so what then does the President want us to do about Islamic extremism?

With regard to perspective, throughout human history we can all find atrocities performed by some fanatic that can be tied to each of us in some way. Through religion, homeland, heritage, lineage, etc. Big deal, what does that data point then mean regarding the item to which it is being compared? Is there any knowledge to derive from the historical data? The President says the knowledge is because we can be tied to similar (in his mind) atrocities, we should not condemn those conducting similar atrocities today. Ok, but don’t stop there, finish the thought. What makes this the same or different? The same because it happened (at some point in history). That’s it? The difference is that we, Christian and other religious Americans, did something about the civil war era atrocities. We first condemned them, and then we eliminated them. Now you have finished the thought, added perspective and offer a message to which everyone can connect.

What then does the President want us to do about Islamic extremism? If we take him at this statement, I guess he must want us to excuse the perpetrators. Since they are like us and we are like them, we cannot condemn or eliminate them. We can’t rightfully and fairly muster up the moral outrage necessary to stop the atrocities because that would be hypocritical of us based on our history. If that is his point, he is dangerously lacking as a critical thinker and a leader. What he and his robotic defenders miss here is that if he is a leader, he has to send a consistent message for the people that crystallizes a believable point. He needs to say, we cannot allow this barbarism to continue any more than we let that barbarism 154 years ago continue. We must recognize that not all Islam is crazy and extreme. But we must also realize that a large faction of that religion wants to eliminate us from the earth. Not matter how crazy they are, or how we may feel it is similar to any actions taken by equally crazy people hundreds of years or even millennia ago, we must stand firm as American always have and do the right thing. STOP IT, NOW! A leader would do that, not just criticize Americans and American and Christian history. A leader would realize that having an action plan and building up your team will get you support. Being the leader of the “hate America crowd”, which this statement is another example of, will not. And since the President doesn’t have a plan, it is unrealistic to expect him to communicate one. Criticizing his country will divert them from the real issue – how to defend ourselves from the religious extremists.

And, speaking of consistency, does the President ever say we are at war or that an enemy has declared war on America? No. As a matter of fact, he consistently says the opposite. He says we have al Qaeda on the run. The world is a far safer place today. He never says, in this prayer breakfast speech or any other time, that we are fighting Islamic extremists. But, he can say Christian extremism and Christian atrocities. Curious? But, even when making those incomplete comparisons, he still cannot say he is making a comparison to Islamic extremism and atrocities. Instead he defends Islam and criticizes Christianity. This is either mind-bogglingly stupid or done for a reason? His robots on the Marxist left conveniently ignore this fact.

“Without wise leadership, a nation falls; with many counselors there is safety.” Proverbs 11:14. Anyone with leadership experience, whether of a child’s tee ball team or a neighborhood bridge club knows, you must clearly, completely, consistently and realistically communicate your plan of action. Since our President has never lead anything, it is no wonder that he consistently and completely fails at the task. Since he does not have a plan, it is no wonder he can’t clearly and completely communicate one. Since he consistently defends Islam, that must be his point. Scary. Very scary. As an article earlier this week said, the next 700 days will be the most dangerous America has ever faced.