British leaders had no hesitation in condemning the Glasgow airport and London transportation terrorist attacks.  President George W. Bush was able to articulate what happened on 9/11.  By contrast, Barack Obama has become a terrorist denier.  The question is “why?”

America’s media organizations are split between those who report last week’s attack on Foot Hood, Texas as an act of domestic terrorism and those who support the President’s claim that the shooting was the act of a man who “cracked” due to stress.  With overwhelming evidence mounting for the former position, President Obama is looking increasingly out of touch with reality. 

Is anyone home...?

Over the past several years, Democrats asserted that military measures taken by the previous administration to combat terrorism actually made things worse.  According to this narrative, the war in Iraq encouraged terrorist recruitment and led to increases in the number of terror attacks. 

Conversely, Barack Obama’s efforts to obtain international goodwill and understanding were presented as something that would really make things better.  The theory was that no one actually wants war and terror so respectful dialogue could resolve the conflict with militant Islamists.  All we had to do was reach out, ask for forgiveness, embrace the concerns of our enemies and denounce all violence. 

One problem with this pacifist approach is that, over time, it is self-evidently invalidated if terrorism continues.  So when terrorism struck this week, the reflex of proponents of this worldview was to characterize it as something else. 

If President Obama had acknowledged that this was a domestic terrorist attack, some journalists might have questioned whether his policies were actually working.  Is his policy of engagement a failure?  What has America gained by being so roundly criticized on the world stage by its own leader?  Is the prosecution of CIA officials by his Justice department undermining intelligence gathering?  Could this attack have been prevented by wiretapping?  What is he doing to prevent further attacks? 

What is worse, some might even ask whether George W. Bush’s approach to anti-terrorism was more successful.  In the years after 9/11 a series of terrorist plots were uncovered, leading to arrests and convictions before atrocities were committed. 

The facts in Texas are pretty clear.  Major Hasan had been in contact with al-Qaeda and openly expounded militant Islamist propaganda.  Far from being a mindless rampage by a psychopath, this was a calculated and premeditated attack on a U.S. military base by a jihadist. 

What else might explain the President’s official stance?  If we remove the politics and take the President’s position at its face value, he isn’t looking very smart.  As some conservative commentators are pointing out, the President jumped to the wrong conclusions in the ‘Gatesgate’ affair when he wrongly accused a police officer of being “stupid” but has missed the obvious conclusions in this attack.  To borrow his term, we know the President isn’t “stupid”.   

Alternatively, it might be that the President sees the attack for what it really is but is trying to discourage a rise in anti-Muslim feelings.  But most Americans understand that the terrorism is carried out by extremists rather than regular Muslims.  Avoiding the fact that Muslim terrorism exists risks feeding public resentment.  When I lived in England at the time of the troubles in Northern Ireland, no one thought that all Irish people were terrorists. 

What is emerging is a picture of a military that was so paralyzed by political correctness that it could not take action to remove a jihadist from its ranks.  Of course, Barack Obama deserves no blame here.  He didn’t create the conditions for Hasan’s attack.  But by not acknowledging the truth, the President is making precisely the same cultural mistake that allowed the attack to happen in the first place.  If he cannot accept that this was militant Islamic terrorism, he will find it difficult to develop policies that will prevent further attacks from being perpetrated.  And he will lose the confidence of Americans who do recognize terrorism when they see it. 

The world is learning that Barack Obama is a pacifist Democrat leader.  Roosevelt actively took sides with the allies before Pearl Harbor, Truman dropped the atomic bomb, Kennedy and Johnson tackled communism in Vietnam. It can be said that even Jimmy Carter launched a military operation to release American hostages in Iran.  Bill Clinton intervened in Yugoslavia.  Contrast all of this with a President who is resisting the requested troop increases in Afghanistan – a war he described as “necessary” during the election campaign – and denying the existence of domestic terrorism. 

Will we look back on these events in one, two or five years with the same level of incredulity?  If the President really wants to protect the American way of life – and we hope he does – the first thing he must do is admit what really happened at Fort Hood.

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