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How Obama Treated Slain Journalists

October 20, 2018

 

As facts are gathered concerning the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the foreign-policy implications are pondered by a liberal chattering class willing to blame President Trump when a sparrow falls from a tree, consider the reaction by President Barack Hussein Obama to the murder of journalists and the press treatment of a president who actually bowed to a Saudi king.

President Trump’s caution against a rush to judgment concerning our Saudi allies has the press moaning that the condemnation of the Saudis is not coming fast enough or will not be harsh enough. Any reaction comes in the context of the need to keep Iran from building a deliverable nuclear weapon or otherwise expanding its hegemony in the Middle East. Listening to Trump’s critics could easily result in a strategic disaster as we sit after the gust clears in our smug anti-Trump motivated self-righteousness/

Journalists should not be slain by authoritarians, tyrants, or ideological fanatics for their views, but they have been, and in the case of President Obama with an attitude of callous indifference. Has the media forgotten the attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which, along with a deli attacked at the same time, the Obama administration dismissed as the victims just being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

The lives of the four Jews killed in a kosher market in Paris were dismissed by Obama as "a bunch of folks in a deli" shot "randomly" as they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

After the attack on that kosher market and on Charlie Hebdo, President Obama didn’t have time to join other world leaders in a moving protest march in the streets of Paris. He did have time to watch an NFL playoff game and welcome the San Antonio Spurs to the White House.

After issuing a perfunctory condemnation of the Islamic State’s beheading of American journalist James Foley, President Obama was moments later on a golf course. The realities of dealing with Islamic terrorism, a phrase that cannot cross his lips, could not be allowed to disturb a President who was contemplating the threat of climate change as he works to correct his slice. 

Not only did Obama go golfing after James Foley’s execution, he didn’t do all that much to prevent it, according to Foley’s family:

The Obama administration failed James Foley in the 21 months before the journalist was savagely executed, the dead man's brother charged.

Michael Foley, speaking Friday with Yahoo News, said the beheading of his sibling by Islamic State (ISIS) jihadists should change America's handling of similar cases in the future.

"There's more that could have been done directly on Jim's behalf," Michael Foley said in a shot at the White House. "I really, really hope that Jim's death pushes us to take another look at our approach to terrorist and hostage negotiation."

Our delusional former commander-in-chief, who still believes the massacre at Ft. Hood by jihadist Nidal Hasan is a case of “workplace violence” and that the Charlie Hebdo/deli massacre in Paris was a case of random violence and of victims being in the wrong place at the wrong time pathetically proclaimed at the G-20 Conference in Antalaya, Turkey, as the Federalist reports:

“What I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people and to protect the people in the region who are getting killed and to protect our allies and people like France,” Obama said. “I’m too busy for that.”

Too busy, the same way you were too busy resting up for a Las Vegas fundraiser the night Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, and Sean Smith were murdered by a terrorist attack in Benghazi, an attack you and your Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, told the parents of the deal was caused by a video?

The French, whom you refused to honor with your presence during a march protesting radical Islamic terrorism after the Charlie Hebdo attack, wasted no time in responding with air strikes on the de facto Islamic State capital of Raqaa, Syria.  As CNN reported:

On Monday, France targeted a command center, a recruitment center, an ammunition storage base and a training camp in the city, the French military said.

On Sunday, the air force struck similar strategic targets in multiple sorties, reinserting France, a partner in the U.S.-led coalition striking ISIS from the air, into the battle against ISIS.

The French were using target coordinates supplied by the U.S.. Why didn’t we strike ISIS with the French in a joint mission? Where was the press condemnation of his callous indifference to the murder of reporters? Why did he bow to a Saudi king?

Critics of President Trump’s handling of the Khashoggi affair ought to revisit President Obama’s indifference to the war on radical Islamic terrorists and the murder of reporters by their bloody hands.

Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business DailyHuman EventsReason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.  

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