{"id":48055,"date":"2015-12-07T04:31:50","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T04:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=48055"},"modified":"2015-12-07T04:33:53","modified_gmt":"2015-12-07T04:33:53","slug":"the-presidents-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=48055","title":{"rendered":"The President’s Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

[by Mark Safranski<\/strong>, a.k.a. “zen<\/strong>“]<\/p>\n

\"obama\"<\/a>
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President Obama<\/strong> addressed the nation in the wake of the ISIS<\/strong>-inspired terrorism\u00a0San Bernardino that killed 14 people. You can read a transcript of his speech here<\/a><\/strong>. A few quick\u00a0comments:<\/p>\n

It is a positive, albeit small, step toward realism in the White House that the President managed to connect an act with terrorism with radical Islam as a causal factor in public. Furthermore, the recognition that our policies on immigration from states with\u00a0extremely problematic connections\u00a0with Islamist extremism and terrorism (i.e. Pakistan<\/strong> and Saudi Arabia<\/strong>) contributed to the massacre is a welcome change. Recall that the administration’s initial reaction was to call the murders “gun violence”\u00a0-as if the culprits here were some kind of mystery –\u00a0and for the Attorney-General<\/strong> to make disturbing noises about criminalizing free speech critical of Islam<\/strong> she found objectionable.<\/p>\n

The President’s reluctance to get into a large ground war with ISIS<\/strong> in Iraq<\/strong> and Syria<\/strong> is laudable. That does not mean our current actions against ISIS<\/strong> are effective or vigorous. They have been up until Russia’s<\/strong> intervention in Syria, remarkably tepid. It is laudable because at present the administration lacks a strategy for a major\u00a0ground campaign; would be diplomatically unable, or find unpalatable, coordinating such a campaign with Russia, Iran<\/strong>, the Kurds, the Iraqi government, France<\/strong> and Turkey;<\/strong> and because the Congress and public would not wish to pay for a war of that magnitude. The President’s current strategy of air power, special forces, advice and aid is not bad in principle, but will not likely be effective in crippling ISIS<\/strong> unless ramped up by many orders of magnitude. Even then it would be a process of grinding ISIS<\/strong> down over time. Will this POTUS do that?<\/p>\n

The President’s plea for gun control on semi-automatic rifles\u00a0is a pet\u00a0partisan issue for liberal Democrats\u00a0irrelevant to stopping terrorism. It has no chance of passing either House of Congress. He will have no luck either with barring people on the No-Fly list from buying guns until he proposes legislation that specifically\u00a0accommodates the due process rights\u00a0of the accused. Nor should he until this happens, given the number of people who have ended up on the unaccountable, secret, No-Fly\u00a0list out of error, capricious bureaucrats, mistaken identity and for being critical in print or online of the performance of government agencies.<\/p>\n

The fact is the POTUS is by this time, a lame duck while 2016 campaigning is well under way. The president has never liked compromise with Republicans or advice from fellow Democrats and has kept counsel with a very small group of advisers in his second term. We are unlikely see much change in policy without a broadening of his inner circle.<\/p>\n

What did you think of this speech?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen“]           President Obama addressed the nation in the wake of the ISIS-inspired terrorism\u00a0San Bernardino that killed 14 people. You can read a transcript of his speech here. A few quick\u00a0comments: It is a positive, albeit small, step toward realism in the White House that the President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1152,183,187,131,211],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1152","category-obama","category-politics","category-security","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48055"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48060,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48055\/revisions\/48060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}