Random acts of foolishness

I spent the first 50 years of my life living in the United States, before making Aliya in 2009. While growing up, I had always felt a sense of pride in being an American and even when I spent my so-called gap year(s) in Israel, I still felt proud of that fact.

Truth be told, and in the words of Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, the United States of America is truly a country of Chessed. The way they treat the Jews in general and the freedom of religion that exists in the States always was a source of pride for Rav Moshe and consequently for thousands of others who read his works.

Even after making Aliya and integrating into Israeli society, I still felt some sense of pride at the fact that I also possessed a United States passport.

I no longer feel that sense of pride. After watching six straight years of President Obama’s abysmal leadership and his stand (or more correctly, lack of a stand) in so many areas both domestic and foreign, he has ruined it for me and countless others.

While there are so many areas I could point to in which President Obama has failed, the one glaring example must be his record on terrorism and the way he relates to the subject as a whole.

In the past few days, Obama has made a few statements that even for HIM are considered ludicrous, insulting and downright dangerous.  A couple of examples will suffice:

1) “It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you’ve got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris”

Look at some of the words in that paragraph and also pay attention to the words that do NOT appear. He refers to terrorists as “a bunch of violent, vicious zealots….” He makes it sound as if there are few hundred people out there who seek blood and wish to wreak havoc on the world. Just your usual gang-bangers or ne’er-do-wells. Yes, just a “bunch” of them out there. And that bunch of people RANDOMLY shoot a “bunch of folks” in a deli in Paris.”  R-A-N-D-O-M-L-Y??? Really? So as Obama would have us believe, this bunch of people just were walking down the street one day and “randomly” decided to choose some people to execute. The fact that they were JEWISH and the fact that the perpetrators were…WAIT!! NO!! I almost said the “T” word….I ALMOST said that the perpetrators were “terrorists.” And I ALMOST said they were “Muslims.”

Obama says nary a word about the word terrorism and CERTAINLY does not identify the “bunch of violent, vicious zealots” as Muslims. How can he?  After all, he banned the usage of the terminology from all official USA communiques on the subject of, well, ummm…”vicious and violent zealots.”

How foolish…how silly and how DANGEROUS to ignore the very cancer that is spreading in the world…and then to refer to the attack in the Hyper Cacher market as “random”? What an insult to every Jewish family!

2) Then, when you thought it could not get any worse, Obama is interviewed by Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias of Vox.com and his reply to a question from the interviewers is simply jaw-droppingly stupid!

MATTHEW YGLESIAS, VOX: Do you think the media sometimes overstates the level of alarm people should have about terrorism and this kind of chaos, as opposed to a longer-term problem of climate change and epidemic disease?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Absolutely. And I don’t blame the media for that. What’s the famous saying about local newscasts, right? If it bleeds, it leads, right? You show crime stories and you show fires, because that’s what folks watch, and it’s all about ratings. And, you know, the problems of terrorism and dysfunction and chaos, along with plane crashes and a few other things, that’s the equivalent when it comes to covering international affairs… And climate change is one that is happening at such a broad scale and at such a complex system, it’s a hard story for the media to tell on a day-to-day basis.

In other words, according to Obama (and the media is perpetuating this, according to him) people really should be more concerned about climate change than the fact there are all these vicious and violent zealots out there perpetrating random acts of violence.

Oh grow up and call a spade a spade!  It is called “terrorism.” They are called “Muslims.” There is NOTHING random about this at all. And, as I have said in the past, with 1.2 BILLION Muslims in the world: If only 5% are “extremists” that gives us SIXTY MILLION people out there, who would love nothing more than to do bodily harm to millions of other human beings.

And this lack of ability and/or desire on behalf of the so-called leader of the free world is embarrassing. How does he close his eyes to facts? How does he even make the attempt to say that the hole-in-the-ozone is more of a threat and a problem that Muslim extremists.  And how DARE he say that any attack similar to that in France’s Kosher market were random?