Defense23 March 2016

Notes from Norm: A Pretend President in a Real World

For much of the time since the end of World War II, Brussels has served as the political capitol of Europe – the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the capitol of the European Union.

As Paris is seen as the cultural capitol of Europe and the world, Brussels is seen as the political capitol of Europe and the world.

The attack by ISIS in Brussels has so far claimed 31 lives and more than 250 people injured.

Some will attribute this week’s attack to the arrest of the alleged ringleader of ISIS attacks in Paris that claimed the lives of 130 people and injuring hundreds more.

Yet, it is far more likely that the Brussels attacks were in place long before the arrest and, if anything, were sped up to allow the terrorists to inflict their carnage before they themselves were apprehended by authorities.

Today, the Obama Administration continues its rhetoric of focused determination to rid the world of the ISIS threat.

It does so against a backdrop of a President posing for photos with one of the world’s longest standing dictatorial regimes in Cuba – in front of propaganda posters for one of the most notorious communist guerilla leaders in that nation’s history – praising Cuba for its people and it culture yet remaining silent on its leader’s oppression and tyranny of those same people and their culture.

In the Washington Post this morning a story with the headline, “How the Brussels attack could force Obama to portray his policy instincts” begins with the following paragraph:

“Obama has been making the case for months that his strategy to defeat the Islamic State and protect Americans at home is slowly working. White House aides speak repeatedly of the 40 percent of the Islamic State’s territory taken back from the group in Iraq and the 20 percent wrested away in Syria. They cite the impact of more than 11,000 U.S. military airstrikes, which they say have killed more than 10,000 front-line fighters.”

Not since the Vietnam War has a White House relied so heavily on body counts to attempt to convince the American people of the success of their efforts to defeat an enemy.

Yet, as the body count of innocents – not combatants – piles up around the world the President and his defenders are silent on the numbers and the statistics.

The President attempts to assure us, again, that ISIS can and will be defeated.  He calls on the world to keep these terror attacks in perspective.  His Administration promises us that these acts of violence are the dying throes of a bruised, battered and dying terror organization.

In lauding “his” achievement at killing Osama Bin Laden we were told to believe the President that al Qaeda had been defeated and terrorists were on the run.

This May it will be 5 years since the American military killed Osama Bin Laden.

Al Qaeda thrives and ISIS has proven itself to be everything we’ve come to fear about the organization.

It is well funded. Capable of striking anywhere in the world. And, it has done little to shift its focus from attacking high profile targets and killing innocent civilians.

We’ve come to understand the President has one set of facts and beliefs when it comes to the world around him.

There are the facts and beliefs of the world that is more and more falling victim to the intensifying horror and terror of well-funded, armed and organized terror organizations.

Terror organizations that have become more robust, more fearless and more focused since Barack Obama belittled them as being the “junior varsity” of terrorists.

Then there are the facts and beliefs of the President.

A man who wants us to see the world the way he wants it to be and not the way the world actually exists.

In his world his voice and his words end pollution. Stop global climate change. Creates jobs. Heals broken economies. Ends tyranny and oppression. Appoints people to the Supreme Court.  

Defeats ISIS and terrorism.

That there exists no correlation between the President’s spoken words and his will in wanting the world to look the way it does on the screen of his teleprompter are indeed stubborn facts.

The attack on Brussels is no longer just an attack on another European City.  

The attack on Brussels, the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – an organization funded by 28 counties – the United States being above and beyond the largest of all 28 – is an attack on those 28 nations.

It is an attack on the United States.

President Obama’s strategy to defeat ISIS is not working.  It hasn’t worked.  It will not work.

It’s time to stop playing pretend policy with a pretend world.

It’s time to start dealing with real policy in a real world.

Or it will be time we accept that the occupant in the White House has simply become a pretend President in a real world.