Bullies don’t typically go after people who are physically weak. They go after people who see themselves as wrong, i.e., morally weak. That’s what’s happening right now with terrorism. Terrorism receded for a time after 9/11, but now it’s back, promising to be bigger than ever.
What changed? Simple: We went from inadequate moral leadership to morally wrong leadership. By “morally wrong,” I mean that we elected a leader who actually does things that favor the other side. Obama’s world-apology tours are well-publicized. He releases 9/11 plotters and other terrorists back to Yemen, a known hotbed of terrorism, where the Christmas Day bomber hatched his own plot. He’s trying 9/11 terrorists — the people responsible for innocent Americans falling to their deaths from the World Trade Towers — as equivalent to purse snatchers, rather than the war criminals they obviously are. When large numbers of the Iranian people start to protest their terrorist-sponsoring government, our leader declares their government legitimate and worthy of civil negotiations. And when that same government laughs at us in disbelief, our leader continues to give “peace” a chance, even as Iran builds a nuclear bomb they’ve made very clear they will immediately drop on Israel.
All this moral weakness in only a year! I know that “moral weakness” sounds like an abstract or preachy term, but when defined rationally and objectively, it’s frighteningly real. When the leader of a nation that has always stood for strength and freedom says and implies, over and over, that America is wrong and bad, he implies that freedom is wrong and bad.
For all his failures, that’s one thing George W.Bush did not do. He usually stood for freedom, at least in words and in concept, though not often enough in practice. Obama, in contrast, continues to announce to the world that freedom, and America by extension, are (at best) flawed and overrated. Is it any wonder we’re under renewed attack?