U.S. Senator Chris Murphy’s immediate reaction to the mass
murder of innocent civilians in France by ISIS inspired terrorists was
remarkably on-script and unemotional, unlike his earlier reaction to a Ted Cruz inspired video in which Senator Cruz, a Republican now running for President, boasts that he
stood up for Second Amendment rights following the Sandy Hook mass murder. The
video, Mr. Murphy said, “makes me want to throw up.” Mr. Murphy’s Democratic
partner in politics from Connecticut, Dick Blumenthal, also denounced the PAC
video, ineptly inserting himself into the Sandy Hook drama. In that smarmy way oleaginous
politicians have of placing themselves center-stage at important events, Mr.
Blumenthal strongly suggested he was present when Governor Dannel Malloy told
the parents of murdered students and teachers at the firehouse near Sandy Hook
Elementary School that their children and teachers would not be coming home
again. In truth, Mr. Blumenthal arrived after the announcement had been
made.
The day after the mass slaughter in Paris —132 dead and nearly 100 injured, so far – Mr. Murphy said, “As President Obama stated this evening, the United
States stands ready to assist in the effort to bring the perpetrators of this
horror to justice.” It was a “cool” statement: The slaughter in Paris was a
“horror” committed by “perpetrators,” not a terrorist act committed by ISIS
inspired Islamic terrorists. In
describing the Paris slaughter of civilian innocents, Mr. Murphy borrowed his
rhetoric from Mr. Obama, for whom explosive but accurate words such as “Islamic
terrorists” are political third-rails to be avoided at all costs.
"Assist" is the operative word in Mr. Murphy’s
statement. Stalin used to ask "how many divisions has the pope?"
Suppose, just to suppose, France's president François Hollande were to ask
President Obama to invoke Article 5 of the 1949
North Atlantic Treaty, which created the NATO alliance. M Hollande already
has declared the attack on Paris “an act of war” by what appears to be an
established state: The acronym ISIS means the Islamic STATE In Syria, now also in northern Iraq, owing mostly to Mr. Obama’s lead-from-behind foreign policy in the
Middle East. Under such circumstances, does anyone suppose Mr. Murphy would
assent to a request for military intervention by NATO counties, including the
United States? Hearts and flowers are fine in such circumstances, but any
American boots-on-the-ground effort to destroy ISIS is, in President Obama’s
view, off the table.
ISIS inspired terrorists in France are not “perps.” They
have allied themselves with a theological and military putsch determined to
establish a caliphate in the Middle East and elsewhere. M. Hollande referred to
the terrorist assault on the people of France in more lucid and accurate terms:
“It is an act of war that was committed by a terrorist army, a jihadist army,
Daesh [an Arabic acronym signifying the Islamic STATE], against France. It is
an act of war that was prepared, organized and planned from abroad, with
complicity from the inside, which the investigation will help establish.”
On October 5, Mr. Murphy issued a media release he titled “MURPHY LEADS GROUP OF 27 SENATORS IN CALLING FOR IMMEDIATE EMERGENCY FUNDING TO INCREASE U.S. HUMANITARIAN SUPPORT FOR SYRIA, CAPACITY FOR REFUGEE ADMISSIONS.” In addition to providing more
funding for Syrian refugees, some of whom were economic refugees from other countries,
Mr. Murphy welcomed “Secretary Kerry’s announcement that the United States will
raise the overall cap on refugee admissions from 70,000 to 100,000 over the
next two years, but the announcement will be meaningful only if Congress
provides the necessary resources.”
Mr. Murphy’s media
release attributes the influx of Syrian refugees into Europe to the “brutality
and callousness of ISIL [or ISIS] and the Assad regime… Ultimately the Syrian civil war
must end. But until that time, we can take the measures proposed above to have
an immediate, yet lasting, impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of
Syrians – including those who will be needed to rebuild their country.” There
is no mention in Mr. Murphy’s media release of Mr. Obama’s disappearing red
line in Syria, or of his imprudent withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, or
of his flaccid and ineffective lead-from-behind Middle East foreign policy, or
of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of what appears to be
a gun-running operation in Benghazi following the overthrow of a distasteful
regime in Libya -- which is, even those
on the left have been forced to acknowledge, the Obama administration’s Iraq.
The day before the
assault on Paris by Islamic terrorists, Mr. Obama assured the world that ISIS
had been contained. A few days after the attack, he repeated this preposterous
assertion at an economic conference attended by, among others, President and
oil baron of Russia Vladimir Putin, to whom Mr. Obama has entrusted his
haphazardly fashioned Middle East foreign policy portfolio.
And so it goes with
Mr. Obama and Mr. Murphy and the other members of Connecticut’s U.S.
Congressional Delegation, all pratfalling Democrats tumbling headlong down
history’s chute, seemingly unaware that the most direct means of assisting
Syrian refugees – one of whom, tucked among the dispossessed, was responsible
for the carnage in Paris – is to repatriate them after ISIS has been decimated and
rendered harmless by American boots-on-the-ground. This is the only effective way of stopping the flow of refugees, a solution staunchly rejected by Mr. Murphy. Mr. Obama has the means but not the will to provide
effective succor for those in the Middle East fleeing the predictable
consequences of his hapless foreign policy. He won’t do it: Vanity and pig-headedness
are the mistresses of his soul.
ISIS MUST BE
DESTROYED.
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