by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n The president did not really answer questions as much as lecture the nation at his press conference Tuesday about how everyone and everything are politicized except his own policies \u2014 as the same old themes and tropes always seem to reappear. \u201cGame-changers\u201d and \u201cred lines\u201d are boldly announced and then quietly modified and internationalized. We sorta, kinda may do something if the \u201cinternational community\u201d (rather than the U.S. Congress, \u00e0 la Libya) determines that there was WMD use in Syria \u2014 but probably not. And even as prior game-changers are contextualized, once broken promises refloat \u2014 like yet another dramatic vow to close Guantanamo. The president is an expert at issuing executive orders to circumvent marriage laws, bans on women in combat, immigration enforcement, etc., so why, in the aftermath of Boston, does he not just use his powers to close the facility as he promises?<\/p>\n There is a strange priority of focus: The president is now unaware that for weeks those knowledgeable about \u201clong time ago\u201d\/\u201dwhat difference does it make?\u201d Benghazi have claimed that they feared reprisals should they testify about heretofore unknown facts of the killings. Yet he has time to call Jason Collins to congratulate him on apparently being the first openly gay basketball player in the NBA. Then comes the normal \u201cprojection,\u201d in which Obama assumes that others share his own way of thinking, in this case by alleging that Lindsey Graham is worried about the FBI and CIA lapses largely because of his desire for \u201cheadlines.\u201d Post hoc fallacies are the new normal: The law-enforcement responseafter\u00a0<\/em>the bombings was excellent, therefore it was as well before. Petulance is always a requisite: The president laments that he cannot do the job for the other side, and at one point sighs, \u201cWell, if you put it that way, Jonathan, maybe I should just pack up and go home.\u201d<\/p>\n Condescension is the same old, same old: We all really love the early implementation of parts of Obamacare, but like the proverbial clingers, we just are not in-the-know enough to appreciate it.<\/p>\n And always looming is what is never said \u2014 the dangers of radical Islam. But there is no such reluctance on the part of the administration to sermonize to us\u00a0about the\u00a0perils of our Neanderthal reactions to terrorism, rather than to warn of the catalysts of the act itself. How odd that just as the attorney general lectures about overreacting to Boston, the president himself apparently\u00a0suggests a hunger strike may well lead to Guantanamo being shut down (the delighted and famished detainees must be reading their Alinsky). In short, we are still\u00a0clueless\u00a0about what energizes the Tsarnaevs, in Major Hasan style, to commit workplace violence and to contribute to man-caused disasters, all in pursuit of their own holy struggles and purification, as they recklessly endanger our diversity programs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner The president did not really answer questions as much as lecture the nation at his press conference Tuesday about how everyone and everything are politicized except his own policies \u2014 as the same old themes and tropes always seem to reappear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[536],"tags":[852,274,726,1041,162,76],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1xr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6584,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/game-changers\/","url_meta":{"origin":5917,"position":0},"title":"‘Game Changers’","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 3, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0Tribune Media Services\u00a0 When -- not if -- is the only mystery about an Iranian nuclear bomb. All the warning signs are there. 'Game changers' In 2008, presidential candidate\u00a0Barack Obama\u00a0on two occasions went out of his way to warn the Iranians that the development of a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5931,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hope-for-change-in-syria\/","url_meta":{"origin":5917,"position":1},"title":"Hope for Change in Syria","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Once again, Obama has proven more of an idealist than an implementer. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Remember when President Obama used to warn Syria\u2019s Bashar al-Assad to stop his mass killing and step down? Moammar Qaddafi\u2019s dictatorship had just collapsed under Western bombing. The murders of Americans\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6483,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/syria-in-a-nutshell\/","url_meta":{"origin":5917,"position":2},"title":"Syria in a Nutshell","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 We are contemplating going to war in Syria to help the opposition a lot and to hurt Assad some, or to help the opposition some and hurt Assad a lot, or to hurt Assad some and help the opposition some, or to force\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6399,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-the-war-to-save-face-or-save-lives\/","url_meta":{"origin":5917,"position":3},"title":"Is The War to Save Face or Save Lives?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 29, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media Click here to see the symposium of PJ columnists analyzing the pros and cons of an intervention in Syria. Most of the arguments pro and con for an intervention in Syria have already been made. I think the consensus is that while stopping Assad\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6491,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-box-canyon\/","url_meta":{"origin":5917,"position":4},"title":"Obama’s Box Canyon","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Our Hamlet-in-cheif wanted simultaneously to act and not act. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online The Syrian fiasco arose from two mutually contradictory desires. Barack Obama sincerely wanted Bashar Assad to stop killing his own people. Barack Obama also really was not willing to use force to ensure that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6525,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/syria-postmortem\/","url_meta":{"origin":5917,"position":5},"title":"Syria Postmortem","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 I think the so-called Syrian crisis is working out as most anticipated: 1) In about a year or so Assad and Putin will announce that they \u201cthink\u201d they might have in theory rounded up a lot of the WMD, and will soon make\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5918,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5917\/revisions\/5918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}