Somebody Please Tell Obama the Shadow Has Returned?

"The shadow of crisis has passed. 

The state of the union is strong." 

(Barack Obama, State of the Union address, January 21, 2015).

"We're not at a time of war" 

(Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking at the National Press Club, February 17, 2015)

The shadow of crisis has passed? We're not at war? 

Tell that to the parents of James Foley and Kayla Mueller and Steven Sotloff. 

Tell that to the families of the twenty-one Coptic Christians beheaded simultaneously on a beach in Libya. 

Tell that to the 45 souls who were burned to death in the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi today. 

Tell that to Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, who says Iran is busy "speeding up" its nuclear program.

Tell that to the countless men, women, and teenagers, and children of Nigeria, Libya, Iraq, who have been kidnapped, sold into slavery, flogged, beheaded, beaten, crucified, etc. at the hands of Boko Haram. 

Tell that to Islamic State which is currently on a religious crusade for worldwide dominion (see article in this month's Atlantic, below). 

Tell it to Barack Obama, who to this day refuses to acknowledge that these savages are on a mission dictated by yes, Mr. Obama, by their religion (Islam). While you're at it, tell him that the state of the union is not strong, that the shadow of crisis is back. 

If you can find him, that is. Look for him on the links, or at a photo op, maybe a fund-raiser, or writing an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times. 

Actually, I take that back. Today he's heading up a "symposium" on radical extremism, a symposium complete with break-out sessions and planning groups. 

Meanwhile, Islamic State continues its scorched-earth campaign of murder and terror, all in the name of their god.

Here are the first few paragraphs of the article in The Atlantic, by Graeme Wood (it's pretty long!): 

What is the Islamic State? 

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.

The group seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area larger than the United Kingdom. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been its leader since May 2010, but until last summer, his most recent known appearance on film was a grainy mug shot from a stay in U.S. captivity at Camp Bucca during the occupation of Iraq. Then, on July 5 of last year, he stepped into the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, to deliver a Ramadan sermon as the first caliph in generations—upgrading his resolution from grainy to high-definition, and his position from hunted guerrilla to commander of all Muslims. The inflow of jihadists that followed, from around the world, was unprecedented in its pace and volume, and is continuing.

(Read the rest at What ISIS Really Wants here).