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Obama, ISIS, and Being on the Right Side of History Between Tee Times
President Obama on Wednesday slightly delayed his afternoon tee time to speak about the monstrous beheading of American journalist James Foley by ISIS. It was an underwhelming address from the Leader of the Free World who finds the crown so heavy and bothersome that he puts it down aside the putting green.
In his address, Obama did well in the “sympathy-in-chief” role. I do believe that Obama is horrified and saddened, as all Americans are, about the tragic fate of James Foley. But Obama failed in his actual job — that of a leader who must express genuine and righteous anger about this act of barbarism against all people who cherish liberty.
Obama has displayed more passion and employed sharper rhetoric when talking about Republicans in Congress — who, last I heard, are not in the business of sawing off heads to make their point clear. Maybe we’ll get a better performance from our president if ISIS makes fun of the Obamacare website.
Read the whole transcript of Obama’s remarks here, but this is the excerpt that matters to me:
People like this ultimately fail. They fail because the future is won by those who build and not destroy. The world is shaped by people like Jim Foley and the overwhelming majority of humanity who are appalled by those who killed him.
Obama’s phrasing — “people like this ultimately fail” — is passive and weak. It’s akin to Obama’s frequent rhetorical tic about anyone in America who opposes his agenda being on the “wrong side of history.” It’s a throw-away line. It’s meaningless, especially from him. Our semi-retired president just doesn’t get it.
An ideology, a movement, or a nation ultimately fails because someone puts them on the wrong side of history. The history writers are the ideological victors — almost always via war. The people of those nations sacrificed many lives and much treasure to present the “right side of history,” to ensure that “people like this ultimately fail.” At the end of the 20th Century, a history in favor of liberty was written by the West, the inheritors of the Enlightenment. Despite Obama’s rhetoric, such results did not, and will not, happen passively — and certainly not because The One merely states it.
It took the West’s leadership and action to ensure the Nazis would “ultimately fail.” It took the West’s leadership and action to ensure Soviet Communism would “ultimately fail.” It was the West’s reluctance for total victory in Korea that allowed the Kim clan to write their own “right side of history,” which has starved and enslaved millions of innocents. The Democrats’ betrayal of its South Vietnamese allies allowed the murderous communists to write their own “right side of history.” So far, at least, many oppressors and murderers in the world — for decades — are not counted among those who will “ultimately fail.”
If the West doesn’t fully rise to the challenge of Islamic Fascism, centuries of Enlightenment progress for the betterment of liberty will be wiped away in a new history written by these monsters.
Published in General
Well done, Mr. Lakely.
It’s going to take a leader who knows in his bones that nothing, nada, zip, is ever accomplished by coming to the party from a position of weakness. Ever.
If you fail history…
Each generation that fails to learn the lessons of the past by studying the past will learn those lessons through painful experience. Good piece, Jim.
If one is too narcissistic to acknowledge the greatness of those who won the great struggles that shaped our favored national destiny, then all those events are mere impersonal prelude to the arrival of moi. History just happened and turned out OK not because of any virtuous acts but just because.
It is absolutely stunning how little character our President has and that he has not risen to any challenge in office. Maybe his weird use of “history’ is diagnostic.
Lakely is spot on but perhaps too charitable.
I’m a little surprised to learn that other people are still discovering how out of touch a man is who stands over the coffins of people killed on his watch and lies to their families, and that his grasp of history and the impacts his decisions will have on it seem not to be based in reality.
This is an awful person we’re looking at in office right now. He not only is unaware of how bad it looks, how awful, for him to be golfing right now, he seemingly does not care about the opinions of anyone outside his circle.
He’s golfing while Americans are being publicly beheaded. He’s golfing while Americans are being publicly beheaded.
ISIS is going to be Obama’s enduring legacy.