It turned out the “politics of fear” was never about “fear” at all, but about defending ourselves against those who have vowed to destroy our society and subjugate us. When that act of defense becomes “fear,” the Islamic supremacists are winning. “For Obama, terrorism is a four-letter word: Bush,” by Byron York for the Washington Examiner, January 5:
The attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 was more than just al Qaeda’s latest attempt to bring death and destruction to American shores. It was also, in its still-unfolding political aftermath, a head-on collision between Barack Obama’s soaring rhetoric and the reality of terrorism.
Obama’s first response to the incident, or nonresponse, did not surprise anyone who followed his 2008 presidential campaign. As a candidate, Obama repeatedly accused the Bush administration of using terrorism to spread fear among the American public for political gain.
“Since 9/11, we’ve had a president who essentially fed us a politics of fear,” Obama said at a December 2007 Democratic debate in Iowa. “We have been governed by fear for the last six years,” he said two months earlier in Philadelphia. “We’re tired of fear,” he said still earlier at a debate in South Carolina.
Obama pledged a new, quieter approach. He would improve America’s image in the world, reach out to Muslims and dial back the fear.
So when a radical Islamist Army officer shouting “Allahu Akbar!” murdered 13 of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, Obama’s response was so low-key it took him days to recognize it as a terrorist incident. And when a radical Islamist Nigerian nearly succeeded in detonating enough explosives to bring down a Northwest Airlines jumbo jet as it approached Detroit, Obama remained silent.
Some observers thought it was a mistake for the president to continue golfing, swimming and munching shave ice in Hawaii while the nation learned the details of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s terrifying plot. But it was a deliberate plan.
“There is a reason why Obama hasn’t given a public statement,” journalist Marc Ambinder wrote the day after the attempted bombing. “It’s strategy.”…
Of course it is. A strategy that leads straight to disaster.