Go back and document the slaughter, the beheadings, the acts of terrorism, the number of dead and wounded, the battles waged, the blood spilled ever SINCE Barack Obama decided on a course of action of "containment" of ISIS and then tell me how any sane, rational person can defend that strategy.
This article from The Wall Street Journal is a jaw dropper. It basically says that Barack Obama is acting the way he is towards ISIS because he doesn't want to be like George W. Bush.
And to think this man sits in the White House. If this clown was your company's CEO, he'd be ordered in for a psych eval long ago.
For Obama, Muted Reaction to Brussels Attacks Is by Design
BUENOS AIRES—In the aftermath of a deadly terror attack that stirred Americans’ concerns about the potential for threats to the U.S., President Barack Obama pressed ahead with his tour of Latin America, including a planned family excursion in Patagonia.
Mr. Obama’s public appearance of nonchalance has drawn criticism from Republicans that he is detached from Americans’ fears and isn’t sufficiently countering violent extremism. But his approach partly reflects his belief that overreacting to a terrorist attack—however horrific—elevates extremist groups like Islamic State in a way that exaggerates their influence, his aides have said.
Also driving Mr. Obama is his view that the threat of terrorism in Americans’ daily lives often is overstated, and that the focus on it could become self-paralyzing and an excuse to adopt misguided policies. His aides often note that many more Americans are killed by gun violence than terrorist attacks, for instance.
Mr. Obama, asked about the Islamic State threat Wednesday at a news conference in Buenos Aires with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, urged Americans not to give terrorist groups the power “to strike fear in our societies.”
“Even as we are systematic and ruthless and focused in going after them, disrupting their networks, getting their leaders, rolling up their operations, it is very important for us to not respond with fear,” he said. “We send a message to those that might be inspired by them to say, you are not going to change our values of liberty, and openness, and the respect of all people.”
The president also moved to assure Americans that he is committed to defeating Islamic State, which claimed credit for the Brussels attacks and has vowed similar actions across the West, calling it his “top priority.”
The president was on the last day of a groundbreaking trip to Cuba when the terrorists struck Tuesday. He moved forward with his plans to deliver an address to the Cuban people, attend a baseball game with Cuban President Raúl Castro, and continue on to Argentina. Some Republicans, including presidential candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich, said the president should interrupt his trip, which he sees as an important foreign-policy advancement, to return home.
If Tuesday’s attack had been in the U.S., Mr. Obama would have undoubtedly returned to Washington, aides said. But he and his aides have argued that changing his schedule because of a terrorist attack isn’t always advisable, particularly at a time when the White House expects them to continue with some regularity world-wide.
“Obama operates primarily out of his head as opposed to his emotions,” presidential historian Mike Purdy said. He added that while there are “real strengths to that,” American people “want their president to understand what they are feeling, to understand their fears and doubts.”
Mr. Obama’s approach is motivated by the same factors that propelled him to office, said Barry Pavel, director of the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council, a think tank.
“It’s pretty obvious what’s driving him…which is the overactivity and aggressiveness of the Bush administration,” Mr. Pavel said, describing Mr. Obama’s policies as embedded in “restraint and moderation and caution and patience.”
The president has resisted pressure to change a U.S. strategy of airstrikes, special-operations forces raids, and cooperation with Western and local allies to take on Islamic State, also known as ISIS. While he has at times put more resources into the strategy, Republicans, along with some Democrats and American military officials, have said the U.S. should do more in terms of sending troops and arms.
In the wake of Brussels, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R., Calif.) said U.S.-backed opposition fighters against Islamic State should receive “the mortars, the artillery, the antitank weapons to win that fight.”
“Unfortunately, the White House still doesn’t have a plan to get the job done,” Mr. Royce said in a radio interview.
Hillary Clinton, Mr. Obama’s former secretary of state and the Democratic front-runner in the race to succeed him, said the U.S. policy can’t be to “contain” Islamic State—which Mr. Obama’s critics have said his strategy is designed to do. “We must defeat ISIS,” Mrs. Clinton said in a foreign-policy speech Wednesday.
Mrs. Clinton added, “Our fight against radical jihadist terrorists will be long and there is very real risk of future attacks here at home.”
The White House is increasingly concerned about a culture of fear taking hold in what they essentially see as a new normal, with the threat of attacks always there. The president criticized Mr. Cruz by name over his calling this week for police to be allowed to “patrol and secure” Muslim communities in the U.S. Mr. Obama pointed to the proposal as precisely the type of reactive policy change that gives terrorists a win by giving up core American freedoms.
He also criticized Mr. Cruz’s comments that the U.S. should “carpet bomb” Islamic State, a move the president said would be contrary to American values and kill innocent civilians.
Mr. Obama said his strategy has taken 40% of the territory previously conquered by Islamic State, thinned its leadership ranks and forced them into hiding. Critics have noted that Islamic State has established new strongholds in Libya and managed to hold large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.
The U.S. is continuing to seek out effective methods against the group, Mr. Obama said, but emphasized he wouldn’t take additional action without sound reasons.
“We don’t just go ahead and blow something up just so that we can go back home and say we blew something up,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not a foreign policy. That’s not a military strategy.”
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