Roger L. Simon:
Although many or most are atheists or agnostics, the leaders of the Democratic Party—not to mention their candidates—must be saying at least a dozen “Hail Marys” and a whole bunch of “Our Fathers” that there won’t be any major terror attacks between now and November. Anything of significance and Donald Trump could waltz into the White House by acclamation. (A Fox News poll shows voters prefer Trump over Clinton 50-42 on terrorism.)
It may have happened already. If the EgyptAir 804 crash is shown to be an act of terrorism (unclear, though highly possible, at this point), a lot of people will be having second thoughts about Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Hillary has tied herself to Obama’s botched (to put it mildly) foreign policy and Bernie thinks the real terrorists are in Prada suits at Goldman Sachs.
Terrorism obviously can’t be blamed exclusively on the Democrats, but the bizarre behavior of our president from refusing to call Islamic terrorism Islamic or evenradical Islamic or fundamentalist Islamic or anything remotely Islamic to lecturing Christians on the Crusades when ISIS is beheading Christians on a beachnow bespeaks a man who is psychologically threatened with the situation in ways he has not even begun to face.
Donald Trump has no such problem. He is, if anything, too quick to blame terrorism, although, running for office, it’s hardly surprising he immediately tweeted “Looks like yet another terrorist attack. Airplane departed from Paris. When will we get tough, smart and vigilant? Great hate and sickness!”
And no wonder Josh Earnest rushed to remind the press corps of the administration’s “great success” against ISIS, or ISIL, as they invariably call the terror state, a preference of interest only to those like Ben “Mind Meld” Rhodes who live in the insular world of the president. Never mind that ISIS is currently“tearing Iraq apart.”
But this isn’t finally about ISIS or al Qaeda or any of the groups that are fungible in a matter of minutes, literally, but of the religious ideology that spawns them all, the very ideology Obama (and Hillary, pathetically and slavishly) will not name or admit.
Nevertheless, we have have been at war with Islamic supremacism since 9/11 (actually before) and likely to be in that war, I regret to say, as long as most or all of us are alive. (Interestingly, former defense secretary Robert Gates was quick to criticize Trump for his tweet when it was Gates, et al., who ultimately failed to confront this enemy. Admittedly, Gates has been better than Obama or Hillary.)
But speaking of spawning, in the endless cable news thumb-sucking regarding EgyptAir 804, one of the more interesting suggestions of a culprit came from Jim Hanson of the Center for Security Policy who mentioned the possibility of the Muslim Brotherhood. The MB, as will be recalled, was for a short time, in the person of Obama’s good buddy the Islamist fanatic Mohammed Morsi, in control of Egypt. The MB is also the transnational Sunni organization founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna that revived the fundamentalism that gave us al-Qaeda and later ISIS. The MB is their immediate ancestor. Finally, the Muslim Brotherhood connects back to Hillary Clinton via Huma Abedin’s mother.