In Defense Of Obama Not Going To Paris

Leo McNeil ^ | January 12, 2015 | Leo McNeil

[LeoMcNeil]

Much is being made of President Obama’s failure to attend the Paris unity march yesterday. Apparently Eric Holder was sent but he was nowhere to be found when 40 world leaders locked arms in a show of unity against Muslim terrorism. This isn’t even a matter of Obama leading from behind, it’s a matter of him not showing up. On the other hand, wasn’t the Paris unity march sort of odd? Where was the unity march with world leaders when the US was attacked on 911? Where was it when London was attacked? Where was it when Australia was attacked last month? Where is the unity march for the 2,000 people murdered in Nigeria last week by the Muslim group Boko Haram? We could even make the argument that France wasn’t even united. How can a nation call itself united when the fastest growing political party in France over the last decade, le Pen’s “far-right” National Front, is banned from the unity marches?

Let’s be perfectly honest about the satire magazine Charlie Hebdo. This rag is disgusting and vulgar. They have depicted Jesus Christ in the most obscene ways imaginable, just as they have depicted the false prophet Muhammad. Does this mean they deserve to be firebombed and murdered? Of course not. It’s important to note that only Muslims attack over vulgar satire. Having said that, do we conservatives here in the United States really want to rally around Charlie Hebdo as the symbol of free speech in the west? This is an especially important questions for conservatives who are also Christians. While Charlie Hebdo may have the right to print their vulgar magazine, we do not need to rally around that magazine as a symbol of free speech in the west. Not rallying around Charlie Hebdo doesn’t mean we support barbarian Muslim terrorists. Quite the contrary, it means we’ve thought about the magazine and decided it isn’t worth rallying around even when we’re very much opposed to the Muslim terrorist attacks against it.

Obviously President Obama didn’t show up in Paris because le Pen’s National Front was banned from the unity march or because Charlie Hebdo is vulgar and not worth defending free speech over. He also didn’t show up because he found it odd that leaders from around the world showed up for a French unity march but did not show up after other terrorist attacks. He isn’t even playing the race card by either going to Nigeria or demanding everyone go there as an act of unity against Boko Haram. That leaves the question why he didn’t show up. One could reach the conclusion that because the administration has supported Muslim extremists like the Muslim Brotherhood in the past Obama is reluctant to push back against Muslim extremists even after a major terrorist attack. Considering that in Syria Obama has supported al Qaeda, perhaps he’s unwilling to oppose them publicly in Paris.

The more likely conclusion is that Obama is just lazy and didn’t want to go to Paris. Perhaps he thinks the United States had no interest in being represented at the unity march. Perhaps more likely, the President didn’t feel like going to Paris and his staff failed to grasp the enormity of what was going to happen. In doing so they missed the photo op of a lifetime for Obama, who surely would have been right in the middle next to French President Francois Hollande. Not even the Vice President showed up, which suggests that the administration really didn’t grasp what was going on in Paris. Or perhaps it suggests that they just didn’t care. After all, this is an administration that is very reluctant to call acts by Muslims terrorism. Perhaps the President didn’t really want to be associated with a demonstration against something he would likely call a local criminal act if it happened here in the United States.

No matter what Obama’s reason for not going to Paris is, the fact that he didn’t go isn’t something to get excited about. Nigerian Christians are being murdered by the thousand by Boko Haram, American Christians should be far more disturbed by those events. Charlie Hebdo is a vulgar, disgusting rag and isn’t the symbol of free speech in the west. If it is such a symbol, it’s only a symbol of how far we’ve fallen from our historic Christian roots. Why exactly does the world have to be unified against Muslim barbarians over Paris but not over Boston, London or Sydney? The answer of course is that the Paris attacks were an attack against free speech but again we’re talking about the most vulgar form of free speech. We can defend free speech without lowering ourselves to the level of Charlie Hebdo. Whatever Obama’s reasons for not going to Paris, he ultimately made the right decision. Our President does not need to participate in a unity day for the French people. Especially a unity day that explicitly excludes certain Frenchmen based on their political views.

[chajin]

Yes, the march means nothing, but this is a matter of optics.

Bibi was there. Sarah would have been there. That says it all.

Je suis Yoav.

[jimjohn]

Addendum:

And as far as Boko Haram is concerned, they should be carpet bombed, and not hash tagged. But then again... see tagline.

[Stepan12]

Why doesn’t the writer of this piece mention the terrorist attacks in Israel? In Jerusalem, where four people were gunned down in a synagogue? Does this creep think the murder of Jews is not terror? Maybe like Obama, this author supports terror when it is done against Jews and bad when it is done against anyone else.

[Liz]

DHS' JEH JOHNSON AND SECY OF STATE JOHN KERRY SIGN OFF ON OBAMA'S ORDER
will welcome into the US, immigrants with 'limited' terror contact
The Daily Caller | 2/5/14 / FR Posted by Nachum

The Obama administration has issued new exemptions to a law that bars certain asylum-seekers and refugees who provided “limited material support” to terrorists who are believed to pose no threat from the U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department published the new exemptions Wednesday in the Federal Register to narrow a ban in the Immigration and Nationality Act excluding refugees and asylum seekers who had provided limited material support, no matter how minor, to terrorists.

“These exemptions cover five kinds of limited material support that have adversely and unfairly affected refugees and asylum seekers with no tangible connection to terrorism: material support that was insignificant in amount or provided incidentally in the course of everyday social, commercial, family or humanitarian interactions, or under significant pressure,” a DHS official explained to The Daily Caller.

Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and Secretary of State John Kerry signed the exemptions. DHS contends that the law change is “commonsense” and that immigration procedures will remain the same in other respects. (Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...

[mazda77]

So when the rest of the world is getting it, we just act like it never happened? Funny way to invite those who cowered in a PC huddle to the game when they discover that it was the PC that got them there.

[KSCITYBOY]

I would think it was to stand against terror!

[Lee'sGhost]

I want somebody to photoshop Obama in golf clothes and club leading the group in Paris. Or maybe in a golf cart.

[Lazamataz]

I don't understand the fixation so many conservatives have with a U.S. leader attending a silly "march for unity" in a foreign country.

You people are such amateurs.

Let us assume the march was a vapid and useless affair, something I do not stipulate: You STILL must hold your enemy to his own standards. Make no mistake, we are at ideological war. Read Saul Alinsky, and apply his principles against our foe. Alinsky rule #4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." They are all about "marches for unity"? Good. Crucify Obama for not attending.

And back to my refusal to stipulate that this was a vapid and meaningless affair. On the contrary. It might just be the first stirrings of an anti-Muslim movement.

[Gamecock]

Let a feral black get shot while attaching a cop and 0bama will be there though.

[fatnotlazy]

Well, in all the firms I worked for, the senior partners showed up for all employee events. They also had to attend various functions for charitable and civic endeavors. I’m sure they didn’t want to attend any of these events, but it was important for the image of the firm that they do.

[EternalVigilance]

A Je Suis Charles Martel march would have been worth attending.

Everyone bring a Hammer!

[LeoMcNeil]

There’s a big difference between playing national anthems and issuing statements and showing up at a rally and locking arms for a massive world photo op.

[LeoMcNeil]

In John Kerry’s defense, he was in India for a conference scheduled long ago.

[BitWielder1]

Just as well. He would have made it all about himself and disgraced America even more while he were at it.

[randita]

Perhaps the President didn’t really want to be associated with a demonstration against something he would likely call a local criminal act if it happened here in the United States.

Workplace violence. Nothing to get all wee wee'd up about.

[ilgipper]

SOMEONE should have been there. If not the President, the VP or another key official. We’ve completely advocated any role on the world stage.

[Liz]

So why didn't Secy of State John Kerry show up in Paris?

==========================================

KERRY WAS THEN A US SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETS---Within hours of the Boston Marathon bombings by two Chechen Muslim immigrants, US government officials, and Muslims, in Boston called each other to offer assistance......just in case THE MUZZIES suffered backlash or threats.

Bomber worshipped at Islamic Society of Boston's mosque---built w/ then-Mayor Menino's govt authority.

Kerry's "credentials," presented to Ohaha when the Secy of State job became available.

==================================================

(NTL REVIEW/DAVID HANSON) The Boston bomber Tsarnev brothers---Chechan Muslim immigrants here on expired student visas---offer us a teachable moment about what has become near-suicidal US immigration policies..... the government can't, and wont, assure Americans that it is enforcing immigration laws already on the books:

(1) foreign nationals must at least avoid crime and stay off public assistance, and,

(2) the govt would be disinclined to grant "asylum" (free ride on the US gravy train) to “fearful refugees” from war-torn Islamic regions, and,

(3) forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for these "fearful foreign nationals" to travel back and forth to their supposedly hostile homelands.

[maggief]

“Considering that in Syria Obama has supported al Qaeda, perhaps he’s unwilling to oppose them publicly in Paris.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/11/eric-holder-paris-unity-rally-war-against-terrorists

Eric Holder says US ‘at war’ with ‘lone wolf’ terrorists after Paris attacks

...

Asked if he believed the Yemen-based Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had “ordered, co-ordinated and paid for” the Paris attacks, the group having been linked to one of the attackers on Charlie Hebdo, Holder said: “We don’t have any credible information at least as yet to indicate who was responsible, who sponsored this act.

++++++++++++++++++

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/01/10/paris-terror-attack-suspects-reportedly-steal-car-take-hostage-in-northeast/

A member of Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen said Friday that the group directed the massacre earlier this week at a Paris magazine, as the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning to citizens, saying they faced an increased risk of reprisals.

(snip)

However, Cherif Kouachi told a French TV station before Friday’s raid at an industrial park that he was sent by Al Qaeda in Yemen and had been financed by the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Yemen in 2011.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2900259/Gunmen-kill-11-Charlie-Hebdo-attack.html

Teenage suspect ‘arrested after handing himself into police’ over Paris magazine massacre that left 12 dead - as anti-terror unit raids building in hunt for two brothers ‘trained in Yemen as assassins’

(snip)

Witnesses said the gunmen shouted ‘we are from the Al Qaeda in Yemen’, and ‘Allahu akbar!’ - Arabic for ‘God is great’ - as they stalked the building.
They were also said to have yelled ‘the Prophet has been avenged’, during what was France’s deadliest post-war terrorist attack.

(snip)

Gunmen reportedly told another witness: ‘You say to the media, it was Al Qaeda in Yemen.’

(snip)

As well as the AK47 assault rifles, there were also reports of a rocket-propelled grenade being used in the attack.

[LeoMcNeil]

I highly doubt that France asked Obama not to show up. My guess is that one of three things happened, two directly relating to Obama. Either he is lazy and didn’t want to fly to Europe or he was worried about the political fallout with whatever Muslim groups he’s working with. The alternative is that his staff completely dropped the ball and didn’t comprehend how big of a photo op the unity rally was going to be. To be perfectly honest, I lean towards his staff dropping the ball. By staff I of course mean Valerie Jarrett, though she won’t get blamed by Obama.

[hdstmf]

This was a meeting of WORLD LEADERS against Muslim terrorist. O is not qualified on either count.