Calling a Club a Diamond

This whole week's events in France and the subsequent reaction have provided a few embarrassments to the White House, of course.  I will dismiss one, mostly, and focus on the other.

Barack Obama did not show up for the arm-in-arm parade of world leaders walking down the streets of Paris last week.  He took copious flak for that, and weakly protested through his assorted mouthpieces in the press and his own press secretary, Josh Earnest (one Democrat who is not paid nearly enough -- who'd want THAT job?), that it was a matter of logistics.  It was really difficult, they all maintained, to deal with the security detail needed to arrange such a visit.

I don't know why he didn't go -- for all that, they might not have even asked him to go; Netanyahu was actually asked not to go (he went anyway, after Abbas decided to go).  I sincerely doubt that the White House staff cogitated about the security detail.  Fortunately for them, though, the security logistics actually were a reasonable argument.  They certainly could have said "It's too dangerous for the president, let's send Biden (no one cares about him) or Holder (he's already there)", but they didn't -- which was a large mistake.

The larger embarrassment was and is related to the White House's utter avoidance of the term "Islamic terrorism" in discussing the incident.  Everyone else is using it; heck, our allies do, and even the Islamic terrorists themselves call themselves that.  Some of the leftiest papers in the USA use the term -- the Washington Post did on Thursday -- although they don't really ask the White House why they don't; that's left to Fox News.

The given answer is that Obama and his people claim that the murderers are "terrorists", yes, but not Islamic; they use Islam "wrongly" and therefore we shouldn't connect the two (I think I am fairly presenting their case).  There is "extremism" of many kinds, they say, so they won't focus on one over the other -- that was said by some functionary in regard to an upcoming conference and her refusal to use the "I-word."

But, here -- here is the real question that needs to be answered.  To quote Hillary Clinton's most famous line, "What difference does it make?"

Well, there's a difference to somebody.  Really; forgetting what they say, I am struggling to understand why they are truly reluctant to use the term.  What bad thing does the White House think is going to happen if the president of the United States actually uses the term "Islamic terrorism" when referring to Islamic terrorism?  When they sat around the table and said "No, we're not going to use the term", did anyone there ask "gee, Barry, why not?" (or did Valerie Jarrett simply hush them into silence)?

Did they think it would inflame the terrorists (who are already murdering innocents and plotting more major attacks) even more?  Did they think it would affect our allies (who already use the term)?  Was it going to change the attitude of the peaceful majority of world Muslims (who either already reject the terrorists or are innately "for" them; nothing Barack Obama says will change that)?

This is where someone has to have the courage to ask what is going on inside the heads of the White House these days.  I'm not talking about their Earnest rationalization for not using the term (which even they obviously don't buy); I'm talking about the internal, known-only-in-the-White-House reason for having the phrase banned in the first place.

There's something deeper, and we really need to know what it is.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton