“If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.” —George Washington, 1793

Today is the anniversary of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, “a date which will live in infamy,” as Franklin Roosevelt noted then. There were 2,403 Americans were killed in that attack, and it resulted in a declaration of war and our entry into World War II.

The 9/11 Islamist attack on our homeland 60 years later was no less brutal, targeted primarily civilians. There were 2,977 deaths in that attack, and rightly resulted in a war on two primary fronts, Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition to those major warfronts, President George W. Bush initiated clandestine strikes against Jihad terrorists around the world.

His objective was not only to crush terrorist power bases but to keep the fight on their turf.

After launching strikes against al-Qa'ida targets, Bush addressed the nation on 21 September 2001, saying, “Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done. … From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. … As long as the United States of America is determined and strong, this will not be an age of terror; this will be an age of liberty, here and across the world.”

Unfortunately, as we have warned on the pages of The Patriot Post for the last seven years, Barack Obama’s political retreat from Islamic terror warfronts, predictably, provided a vacuum that was quickly filled by a more heinous metastasizing terrorist regime, the Islamic State.

On Sunday night, in a rare Oval Office address to the nation, Obama delivered some crafty teleprompted remarks on the most significant homeland attack on Americans since 9/11 — a coordinated Islamist attack on an office Christmas party last week, which occurred just hours after Obama claimed, “ISIL is not going to pose an existential threat to us.”

Notably, the brutal Islamist attack in Paris three weeks earlier occurred just hours after Obama claimed, “We’ve contained them.” And it’s no small irony that the last time Obama addressed the nation on a Sunday night was his announcement that our military operators killed Osama bin Laden.

The focus of his prime-time manure dump was Islamic terrorism – except he did not actually mention “Islamic terrorism.” So, I put on high waders Sunday evening so I could slosh through the water hazard of Obama’s “JV Team” mulligan, and what follows are some notable excerpts with rebuttal:

Barack Obama: Tonight I want to talk with you about this tragedy, the broader threat of terrorism and how we can keep our country safe.
The Patriot Post: Better late than never.

BO: We have no evidence that the killers were directed by a terrorist organization overseas or that they were part of a broader conspiracy here at home.
TP: The list of intervened Islamist attacks and those that have been successful have grown rapidly under Obama. Take NO comfort in the assertion they were not “directed by a terrorist organization.” Anyone with Islamist predispositions and access to the Internet IS part of a “broader conspiracy.”

BO: [The San Bernardino attackers] had gone down the dark path of radicalization, embracing a perverted interpretation of Islam.
TP: Actually, there are countless young Muslims in the U.S. who support that “perverted interpretation,” but who have not acted on it yet. As FBI Director James Comey recently testified, there are now more than 1,000 active investigations of potentially violent Islamists nationwide.

BO: Over the last few years, however, the terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase.
TP: If by “last few years” Obama means “since our ill-advised retreat from Iraq to fulfill my election promise,” then yes.

BO: …decimating al-Qa'ida…
TP: Astoundingly, Obama resurrected and tried to reframe his 2012 re-election campaign charade!

BO: It is this type of attack that we saw at Fort Hood in 2009, in Chattanooga earlier this year, and now in San Bernardino.
TP: Is Obama finally, officially, recognizing that the Ft. Hood and Chattanooga attacks were, in fact, “terrorism”?

BO: [Terrorists are turning to] less complicated acts of violence like the mass shootings that are all too common in our society.
TP: No, as I have outlined repeatedly, this is not a recent development. These “less complicated” threats have metastasized over the last seven years under Obama’s lack of leadership. Last year, in a column entitled “Islamic Jihad — Target USA,” I wrote, “The most likely near-term form of attack against civilians on our turf, will be modeled after the conventional Islamist assaults in the Middle East, bombings and shootings, as we have now seen in Paris, London, Berlin, Sydney, Toronto, Boston, New York and Washington. This type of attack is low tech but effective in terms of instilling public fear with the long-term goal of civil acquiescence.” But the ultimate terrorist objective remains what OBL called “American Hiroshima,” a nuclear detonation in a U.S. urban center. Obama’s “nuke deal” with Iran greatly increased the probability of such an attack.

BO: ISIL fighters were part of the insurgency that we faced in Iraq. But they also know that if we occupy foreign lands, they can [use] our presence to draw new recruits.
TP: Again, our objective, before retreating from Iraq, was to draw fire on their turf rather than ours.

BO: As commander in chief, I have no greater responsibility than the security of the American people.
TP: As commander in chief, the future cost of Obama’s foreign policy failures will be catastrophic. Of course, he intends to invoice the next president with that bill.

BO: Our success won’t depend on tough talk, or abandoning our values. … With American leadership, the international community has begun to establish a process and timeline to pursue cease-fires and a political resolution to the Syrian war.
TP: Actually, all Obama has offered is “talk,” and the only “line” he has established was “red line” with Syria. And, as I wrote recently, he is certainly not the arbiter of “our values.”

BO: If Congress believes, as I do, that we are at war with ISIL, it should go ahead and vote to authorize the continued use of military force against these terrorists. TP: Obama actually attempted to deflect his foreign policy failures to Congress.

Predictably, Obama suggested the real problem is intolerance.

BO: We cannot, turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam. TP: Fine, but Obama fails to recognize that millions of Islamists worldwide, a thousands living in American suburbs, have clearly defined this fight “as a war between America and Islam.”

BO: We’re working with … our Muslim communities here at home, to counter the vicious ideology that ISIL promotes online. … [Islamists] are thugs and killers, part of a cult of death. And they account for a tiny fraction of … millions of patriotic Muslim-Americans who reject their hateful ideology. … It’s a real problem that Muslims must confront without excuse.
TP: Name one national or even notable American Muslim leader who has publicly and unequivocally condemned the San Bernardino attack. As I have noted before, it is estimated that 7% of Muslims are “radicalized,” but in 1940 fewer than 5% of Germans were Nazis. How did that turn out? And, the day after the San Bernardino attack, Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch proclaimed that her primary concern was “anti-Muslim rhetoric.”

Obama then suggested that the solution is the Left’s gun-control agenda.

BO: Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun.
TP: I will defer to Charles Krauthammer on this one: “Look, anything that will keep a gun out of the hands of [Weekly Standard writer] Steve Hayes I think is useful.” The good doctor was joking in reference to the fact that Hayes was recently listed on a no-fly list, despite the fact that he, like 300,000 others on that list, have no known connection to terrorism at all. Of course, the San Bernardino assailants were not on a no-fly list, or any other list.

BO: I know there are some who reject any gun-safety measures.
TP: Actually, there are tens of thousands of “gun-safety measures” on federal, state and local books now, but they are mostly unenforced or unenforceable. As George Will observed, most Americans have no intention of approving Obama’s efforts to undermine the Second Amendment: “This year on Black Friday … 185,000 Americans got background checks for firearms. That is a one day record in this country.”

In summation, clearly Obama and his minions are the “JV Team.”

Washington Post White House correspondent Greg Jaffe conceded, “The absence of big new policy proposals from the president reflects the lack of any low-cost or tidy solutions to ease the concerns of the American people after a string of deadly attacks over the past month.”

Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) was unequivocal in his assessment of the threat: “These are people who know exactly what they are doing. They are motivated by … calls for global Jihad, the defeat of all non-Sunni [people], and the establishment of a global caliphate.”

Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-TX) said it most succinctly: “The tentacles of ISIL now are not only in Europe but also in the United States.”

Obama’s shameless attempt to frame the San Bernardino attack as anything other than terrorism is absurd. His recent assertion that “we have a pattern of mass shootings in this country with no parallel anywhere else in the world,” is patently false. Not “anywhere else in the world”? Not in the Middle East, Africa and Asia? In fact, even among Western nations, the U.S. is 8th in mass murder events with firearms. AND, regarding all murders in the U.S., if you are not associated with drugs or gangs, your probability of being murdered is on par with the safest nations in the West.

As for Obama’s presumed successor, Hillary Clinton, she insists, “I think it’s important to remind ourselves that Islam itself is not our adversary. This is not, and we should not let it become, a clash of civilizations. … The vast majority of Muslims are on our side of the battle.” Again, if 5% of Muslims are not “on our side of the battle,” we better re-engage. Of course, as Clinton said right after the Paris attacks, “We’re not putting America combat troops back into Syria or Iraq. We are not going to do that. … I cannot conceive of any circumstances where I would agree to [put combat troops on the ground].” Really, “can’t conceive of any circumstance”?

Editor’s Note: For clarification on why we use “ISIL” rather than “ISIS,” read about the distinction between the two. Click Here.

(P.S.: I give Obama credit for *not* mentioning climate change as the cause of Islamic terror. And speaking of hot air, did you miss this announcement? At the [Paris climate confab](https://patriotpost.us/articles/39204), just two weeks after the Islamic attack there, Obama’s spokesman Josh Earnest, in passing, mentioned the appointment of a “Senior Advisor to the President for the Counter-ISIL Campaign in Iraq and Syria.” That “advisor,” Rob Malley, grew up in France, the son of an Egyptian communist, and has a long history of ties to Hamas, Hezbollah and Muqtada al-Sadr.)