‘Random’ Thoughts as Obama’s Term Winds Down

“Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few,” declared Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime prime minister, after the Royal Air Force saved his country from German invasion in 1940.

To which Member of Parliament Barack Obama would have added: “Look, the British are also committing war crimes in Ireland, India and Africa. Never in the field of human conflict has so much pain been inflicted by so few on so many.”

Leave it to the president to recall details left by the wayside by lesser persons.

At the height of the barbarism emanating from the Middle East, with ISIS beheading its victims, burning them alive, and probably thinking up new ways of forcing adherence to Islam, Obama sees the speck on the floor.

“Look, Christians also savagely killed.”

Yes, what the malevolent Crusaders and evil Inquisition did was evil and malevolent. But during a week when a close ally’s airman was publicly burned to death by non-Christians, two citizens of another ally beheaded and an American citizen accidentally killed in a retaliatory raid, is that relevant?

Obama is not the first professorial president — Woodrow Wilson was a former president of Princeton University — but he is the first president to be totally tone-deaf to the realities of the world.

If Wilson had used his April 2, 1917, request to Congress to declare war on Germany to go off on a side issue blasting the British for executing rebels in their then-territory of Ireland, it would have sounded, um, like Obama last week.

It’s hard to forget Obama’s reaction to the Democrats’ loss of the Senate in November. The media was abuzz hours before about which ­phraseology of the president would become their front-page headline the next day, just like Bush’s “thumpin’” in 2006, and Obama’s “shellacking” in 2010.

Again, the president saw the speck in the carpet.

“To everyone that voted, I want you to know that I heard you,” Obama began his press conference. “To two-thirds of voters that chose not to participate in the process yesterday, I hear you, too.”

Obama got walloped, shellacked, thumped, almost skinned — yet it was the statistic hidden in section 8-75-s7 chapter 5 para 7 of the poll’s grid that he chose to expound upon. Yes, two-thirds of voters stayed away from a midterm election. It’s a very common occurrence. It’s so unexceptional that nobody — well, except for civic groups — mentioned it.

“Obama: I Hear You,” is how many media outlets headlined their front pages. A better headline for this commentary would be: “Obama: Do You Hear Us?”

Then “random” became the word of the hour when Obama used it last week to describe the terrorists who attacked a kosher supermarket in Paris and killed four Jews. Were those Jews actually known to the killers, White House press secretary John Earnest wanted to know. They weren’t. Ergo, the attack was random.

News articles routinely add the word “allegedly” when describing a crime, since a citizen is innocent until proven guilty. Obama’s White House also adds “randomly.” As in “an alleged suspect randomly entered a bank and allegedly randomly blew open the safe and allegedly stole a random sum of undisclosed cash.”

Obama’s tone deafness has manifested itself numerous times over the years. He declared himself “heartbroken” over the beheading by ISIS of journalist James Foley — and his official photographer released a photo of him golfing and laughing just 10 minutes later. Even his pushing for the passage of Obamacare at a time of the worst economic crisis in 70 years shows something. Yeah, I know, it’s Bush’s fault. But you did campaign for the office, didn’t you?

Then there’s this whopper, made two weeks ago by Eric Schultz, a different White House press secretary:

“Well,” Shultz started in response to a questioner asking why the U.S. negotiated with the Taliban for the release of Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier, but would not talk to ISIS, “I’d also point out that the Taliban is an armed insurgency. ISIL is a terrorist group, and we don’t make concessions to terrorist groups.”

“We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” a Reuters editor wrote shortly after 9/11.

The Taliban is an armed insurgency — our luck they’re not on our team. Oh, well, maybe next time. ISIS, though, is terror forever.

A 2008 Pentagon study released this month made a splash in the media for diagnosing Russia’s Vladimir Putin with Asperger’s syndrome.

It took seven years for the Putin diagnosis to emerge. Not picking up on social cues…

Is there a hidden chapter somewhere waiting for Obama?

This article appeared in print in the February 18th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.