Two Americans have been beheaded, and what do we get from our commander-in-chief? The New York Times characterized it this way: “a strongly worded statement.”
It’s true President Obama’s initial words on ISIS were tougher than usual, vowing to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State. And in sharp contrast to his West Point speech announcing the surge in Afghanistan, he didn’t include a timetable for withdrawal.
Of course, he went on to take some of the sting out by saying his goal is to make ISIS a “manageable problem.”
All this has even Sen. Al Franken (up for re-election, of course) fretting the Obama administration’s response has been too weak. Meanwhile, even as he deploys more American troops to Iraq, the president still refuses to admit we’re at war.
This refusal lies at the heart of Obama’s strategic confusion, as James Rosen of FOX News underscored when he asked a State Department spokeswoman this question:
“From a commonsense point of view,” Rosen said, “the average American will say to himself, ‘This group is at war with us.’ Why does our president or our secretary of state not recognize that and say, ‘Indeed, we are at war with this group and we will destroy them’?”
Good question. How coherent can America’s response be if the United States treats ISIS as a one-off episode and not — as British Prime Minister David Cameron recently recognized — a threat we will be dealing with for a long time to come?
Islamic jihadists beheading people is nothing new. But the decision to murder two Americans in this gruesome fashion, and then put out a video, is a message.
We recall then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s wise words to the 9/11 Commission when she identified the greatest failure of Republican and Democratic administrations before that terrible day in 2001:
“The terrorists were at war with us, but we were not yet at war with them.”
If President Obama is to be believed, we’re still not.