Posted by
RANT BRAZEN on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 7:38:53 PM
President Obama, fresh from an embarrassing absence at the Berlin Wall event, went to Fort Hood to lead the nation in mourning the loss of our valiant soldiers allegedly killed by an allegedly whacked-out Muslim officer of the U.S. Army.
Sorry, Mr. President. Too many false starts. Go ahead. Go through the motions. But somehow I think you have far too many conflicted emotions, divided loyalties, and trackless cultural wanderings to be believed. At this moment you are merely emulating former U.S. presidents who did the right thing, parroting their tributes, taking cues from their actions, and reading heartfelt statements from your teleprompter.
Next week, you’ll be somebody else.
The liberal U.S. media essentially buried the first real clue to how Obama would react to this tragedy. I happened to see it in a live broadcast as Obama addressed a much-ballyhooed Tribal Nations pow-wow at the White House. Obama took pains to remind his audience of American Indians that they have much to be resentful about.
“We know the history that we share. It's a history marked by violence and disease and deprivation. Treaties were violated. Promises were broken. You were told your lands, your religion, your cultures, your languages were not yours to keep,” the president declared. (WH transcript)
It is difficult to know exactly at what point the President knew of the Fort Hood mass murders, as the White House transcript I saw did not include these remarks, and there was a Nixonesque “tape gap” reported on the “verbatim” log of the proceedings.
But the live television coverage said it all. For perhaps two minutes, as CNN displayed a glaring on-screen banner proclaiming ‘BREAKING NEWS: Rampage at U.S. Army Post, 12 dead, including gunman, 2 suspects in custody’, Obama continued to schmooze with the crowd – unaware that the television audience was already way ahead of him and wondering when the president would catch on.
It seemed he didn’t want this unwelcome news to rain on his party. One reporter called it “surreal”, and I agree.
He bantered playfully with his subjects before switching finally into the solemn mood required when announcing that something frightful has happened.
President Clinton had the same crippling self-awareness, and was said to “fix his face” before coming to the podium so that his appearance would match the flavor of the occasion.
Obama is more cleverly superficial. “Deep down,” someone has said, “he’s shallow.”
Toby Hamden of Telegraph UK puts it this way, describing Obama’s curiously detached manner as he finally began to address the terrorist act at Fort Hood:
“Completely missing was the eloquence that Mr. Obama employs when talking about himself. Absent too was any sense that the President empathised with the families and comrades of those murdered. Mr. Obama seems a curiously bloodless president. If he experiences passion, he seldom shows it. It is often anyone's guess as to whether an event or issue truly moves him.”
By the time he reached Fort Hood, Obama’s speech writers had paved the way for him, and his speech was actually a tidy bit of memorializing.
Obama did manage this near miss at a display of revulsion for the Fort Hood murders:
“It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know -- no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. For what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice -- in this world, and the next.” (WH transcript)
David Warren of RealClearPolitics summed it up rather effectively:
“This deadly enemy of the West -- the Islamist ideology which holds all Jews, Christians, other non-Muslims, and a considerable number of Muslims, too, to be human filth in need of extermination -- is well infiltrated. Events like that at Fort Hood prove this, and from what I can see, the problem can only grow with the passage of time.”