What Daniel Pearl's Murder Means To Obama

From The Spectator and Charging Elephant:

What Daniel Pearl's decapitation means to Barack Obama


Saturday, 22nd May 2010



Even given Obama’s ever more terrifying and lethal performance in office, his comments about the jihadi murder of Daniel Pearl, and in front of Daniel’s bereaved family, are simply astounding. This is what Obama said:



‘Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.’



Daniel Pearl was not murdered because he was a journalist. He was decapitated because he was an American Jew. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed cut off his head in an act of unimaginable barbarism, which was videoed in order to incite other Muslims to similar acts of barbarism and to destroy the will of the west to defend itself. But in signing the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act, Obama came up with the remarkable statement that the significance of Daniel Pearl’s murder was merely that



it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.



Any decent and rational person would think that the significance of Daniel Pearl’s murder was actually that the west is up against a psychopathic death cult which has a particular aim of killing Jews and destroying America. But not the American President. In front of the Pearl family, Obama couldn’t even bring himself to say Daniel was murdered. And ‘one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination’??



As ever, Mark Steyn nails it:



He seems literally unable to imagine Pearl’s fate, and so, cruising on autopilot, he reaches for the all-purpose bromides of therapeutic sedation: ‘one of those moments’- you know, like Princess Di's wedding, Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, whatever – ‘that captured the world's imagination.’



... Daniel Pearl was the first, and in his calm, coherent final words, understood why he was there: ‘My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish American from Encino, California, USA.’ He didn't have a prompter. But he spoke the truth. That’s all President Obama owed him - to do the same.



Is it possible to fathom such moral obtuseness in the US President?



Update: And this is how the free press dealt with Obama's remark.

Thursday, 20th May 2010




Here is your starter for ten.



You are an Adviser on Counter-Terrorism in the Obama White House. When a terrorist organisation which has a history of killing the citizens of a country -- and which is backed by a terrorist state which has declared war on the free world -- infiltrates the government of that country and effectively strangles at birth its nascent democratic movement, do you



a) Decry this snuffing out of democracy by the forces of tyranny and terror and vow to support the struggling democrats against their oppressors



b) Hail the terrorist organisation for this proof that it had a ‘moderate’ wing to which you want to reach out?



Three guesses which of these responses was adopted by John Brennan, White House Adviser on Counter-Terrorism -- prompting this outraged and incredulous reaction from a group of Lebanese democrats called the World Council of the Cedars Revolution, who are staggered that anyone could be so stupid and blind as to imagine that Hezbollah contains people whom any rational individual could possibly call moderate.



But then ‘Counter-Terrorism Adviser’ Brennan really is a piece of work. Listen to him here praising to the skies the beauty of Islam, showing off his Arabic and referring to Jerusalem as ‘al Quds’ – Islamic shorthand for the extinction of Jewish peoplehood, adopted as his own discourse by this White House official and former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia: a man who sees moderation in Hezbollah, whose aim is the extermination of Israel.



As First Things observes, the Obama administration is



crazy and dangerous.



I would say evil rather than crazy. And America thinks Britain has a problem with ‘Londonistan’?