(Junior) Varsity Blues

by Derek Hunter | July 4, 2016 12:01 am

President Obama famously said of ISIS, “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think it is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.”

Derek Hunter 3[1]

His flippant attitude toward the terrorist group that formed and grew into a global threat on his watch is but one of countless pieces of evidence the president has no interest in addressing Islamic terrorism in any serious manner.

This week we got more reminders of how unseriously the Obama administration takes the threat of terrorism. In a week where more innocent people were slaughtered in Istanbul, Turkey, Obama spent more time talking about Donald Trump than the attack on a NATO ally.

Worse was the release of the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s report.

The report, which Democrats tried to undercut by releasing their own report a day early – a report which mentioned Donald Trump more times than Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, the two former Navy SEALs killed in the attack, COMBINED – painted a disturbing picture of just how uninterested the president is when it comes to the most important part of his job.

Say what you will about Trump, he bears no responsibility for the terrorist attack on Obama’s watch. That falls fully onto the lap of the commander-in-chief, who appears to have been absent on the night of the attack.

According to the report, unrefuted by Democrats, the president ordered Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to do whatever necessary to help Ambassador Christopher Stevens and those under attack at the US consulate in Benghazi. Panetta relayed that order to the Joint Chiefs of Staff…then nothing was done.

Democrats hang their hats on the claim that no rescue effort would have gotten there in time to save the lives of those lost, but that’s simply not true. Woods and Doherty were killed eight hours after the attack started, and military assets were available but were never sent. The order from the president, conveyed by the secretary of defense to the military, simply disappeared into the ether.

What happened after the order was conveyed is not known, but if the order was given, it was ignored somewhere along the line. And no one in the chain of command seems to give a damn about where.

The answer most Democratic politicians give, again, is it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. But unless they were privy to the attack plans of the terrorists, they had no idea how long it would last. Moreover, survivors, the property and the intelligence there needed to be recovered and protected. There appears to have been no concern for any of those.

What’s more galling than not knowing who disobeyed a direct order from the president to protect Americans under an active terrorist attack is the president’s lack of interest in it.

What Obama was doing during the attack remains unknown. What we can glean from the report is, after knowing Americans were under attack, he never once bothered to check on the progress made in following his order to aid them. He apparently never checked to see if they were safe, if the attack had ended or was ongoing, or even if the ambassador, who was missing at the time the order was given, had been found.

We’re to believe the president gave an order, then never bothered to follow-up to see how it went. This wasn’t a legislative matter where you put some underling on it and check in from time to time; this was an hours-long, sustained attack in a foreign land on Americans representing the government he leads, and he simply didn’t care.

Obama wasn’t alone. Where was Panetta? Did he not have any concern or even curiosity after he allegedly conveyed the order? Although she was not in the chain of command, the report says Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, knew of the order as well.

Did she not wonder how the mission to save State Department employees was going? Stevens was sent to Libya by her; she claims he was her friend. Yet with these questions unanswered, and no one held accountable, she says it’s “time to move on” from Benghazi.

Either someone disregarded a direct order from the president and no one in leadership positions cares who did it, or the order was never given. The people who would know, whose job it is to know, don’t care enough to demand an answer. Which leads a logical mind to believe they do know, and no order was given.

The CIA had a large footprint in Benghazi; reports suggest it was arming Syrian rebels. Those rebels were, most likely, unseemly people the Obama administration doesn’t want the world to know they were arming.

Although foreign policy often means you must accept “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” from time to time, what if you suspect that “friend” is not truly a friend, but you provide aid anyway in hopes you can defeat the big enemy first, then deal with the “friend?” What if the Obama administration was sending weapons to radical Islamists to fight Bashar Assad and some of those people became ISIS?

It wouldn’t have been known at the time those rebels became ISIS because ISIS wasn’t around yet, but it would be known they were Islamic extremists. And a president arming Islamic extremists in the midst of a re-election campaign, even to fight someone as awful as Assad, would not sit well with the American public. It would’ve played out worse than a planned terrorist attack at a time when that president was claiming “Osama bin Laden is dead, GM is alive, and al Qaeda is on the run.”

It’s entirely possible President Obama was sending those Lakers’ uniforms to the JV team. Either that or he simply is indifferent to the issue of terrorism and the loss of American lives. Neither option is good.

Also see,

When We’re Left To Wonder Why

Endnotes:
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