Obama's Big Blunder

[faethor]

You may be right. I'll be very interested to see where the investigation leads. As of this morning, it does not look good. Now the press is reporting that apparently some intelligence agency had this major under observation for electronically trying to contact known terror supporters / groups. As a result, now there is a question as to whether or not the information was relayed to the army. I hope this isn't the case.

Seems CBS was the one who reported this and is jumping the gun (no pun intended). Reports yesterday and today are saying computer experts have found no links to terrorist groups on his personal home computer. It seems the only link is that he attended the same mosque as two of the 9/11 hijackers. Though a few hundred other people do too. It seems if he is a terrorist then using the computer was not how he communicated with his would be brothers.

 

[Glaucus]

If Obama blundered initially, I think he made up for it nicely: President Obama's small masterpiece of a speech at Fort Hood

President Obama's speech at Fort Hood, Texas, was a small masterpiece—less than 15 minutes—in part because it was so modest. The president had great material and he knew not to get in its way.

Less than three minutes into the speech, the president was telling the story of each of the 13 people who had died. The news has been full of every last detail about the shooter. Obama corrected that balance. If the shooter committed the ultimate act of selfishness, then the president took it as his task to bear witness to the selflessness and hard work of the shooter's victims.

...

The president only briefly referred to the killer's faith. He did not take the opportunity to deliver a politically correct lesson about grouping people or about religion. He did not, as David Brooks wrote today, "rush to therapy." Instead the president delivered the opposite of that: judgment. "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."

Obama knew this wasn't the moment to defend Islam. He also knew to keep out of the speech any lessons about reacting in anger—the kind of lessons Bill Clinton sought to convey in his speech after the bombing of Oklahoma City. He left these things out because they were beside the point. The speech was relentlessly focused on celebrating the fallen and what they represent—not just in their reaction to the shooting but on the sacrifices they had willingly endured. "In an age of selfishness, they embody responsibility. In an era of division, they call upon us to come together. In a time of cynicism, they remind us of who we are as Americans."