There is always ambivalence about engaging in freighted speculation. Is there value in putting thoughts in people’s minds, if they aren’t already there? Why introduce discouraging ideas?
One reason is to frame the seriousness of our problems. If some speculation isn’t borne out by events, that doesn’t mean it was unjustified; it means we got lucky – or, as some would put it, we were blessed, or under divine protection.
It matters that we learn from the very real vulnerabilities we back ourselves into, and act more wisely in the future.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
So this is worth saying. It’s not just likely that America will be hit with a major terrorist attack in the next 10 months. It’s likely that Obama won’t respond with any useful or decisive measures. It’s likely that he simply won’t care, and that he’ll react as if he doesn’t.
Although this has occurred to me before, the obviousness of it was on display on Tuesday, as Obama remained in saturnine repose, engaged in thoroughly un-American activity, while Brussels came under attack.
It’s not as if he was representing the American people in a way that the people would admire and approve. He was kowtowing to a Marxist dictator, symbolically humiliating his people and our belief in liberty – the belief that won the Cold War against Soviet Marxism.
Thousands of political prisoners arrested by Cuba just in the last year languished in prison cells only miles away from the ballpark. Raul Castro had taken the opportunity of Obama’s importunate visit to lie about America and excoriate her for the very things that are her greatest virtues, and Obama made no pretense of defending the nation he presides over.
When the news broke of the attacks in Brussels, the “living of his life” that was so important Obama needed to keep doing it, rather than let terrorists interfere with him, was this terribly un-American lie – this cheap triumph for the cynical, soulless radicals of 1968 – that he was participating in.
There is no bridging the gap between Americanness and this. And there’s no papering over it anymore. This is who Obama is. He doesn’t see things through American eyes. And he doesn’t care what happens to America. To him, America is just a prop for ideological pageantry.
Obama has already done all the things necessary to make a major terrorist attack on America more possible and more likely. His administration has reduced our border and immigration enforcement significantly; actively prevented our security agencies from vetting visa applicants; dramatically increased the number of immigrants from the Islamic terror-producing countries; prevented security agencies from keeping records on individuals with terror ties; ruthlessly exterminated training materials on Islamic extremism from federal agencies; and leaned on states and cities to blind themselves, too, to the absurdly obvious connection between the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic centers, and Islamic terrorism. (In spite of these numerous enforced vulnerabilities, the Obama administration has also kept travel to the U.S. visa-free for passport-holders from Belgium, the Islamist plotting capital of Europe.)
Perhaps our hobbled but hard-working law enforcement and intelligence agencies will be able to interdict all terror attempts between now and January 2017.
But if they can’t, and America does sustain a major attack of some kind – very likely a collaboration between immigrants (illegal or legal) and ISIS operatives overseas – what we can expect is the Obama of the Cuban ballpark on 22 March 2016.
Sure, he may speak predictably for a few minutes about the need to unite against extremism, already. He’ll make the usual gestures with law enforcement.
But there’s no reason to think he will do even as much as Francois Hollande did after the November 2015 attacks in Paris. Unlike George W. Bush, who was already planning the regime-change of Afghanistan when he urged Americans to keep living their lives after 9/11, Obama will merely shrug and flip his people off.
Except, of course, that he or someone in his administration will chastise Americans about the evils of racism, “Islamophobia,” and a model of Christian triumphalism from 800 years ago.
It will be clear that there are no meaningful consequences for attacking America.
There is nothing you can point to that would indicate Obama will do otherwise.
