[A recent The Atlantic magazine] piece described the President as frustrated that terrorism keeps swamping his long-term priorities, including improving ties to Latin America and intensifying links to Asia.
The same profile notes Obama's admiration for Israeli resilience in the face of repeated attacks. It describes his penchant for reminding his advisors that more Americans die because of guns or accidents in the bathtub -- and those advisers' efforts to keep Obama doing this too publicly because it might make him seem insensitive to public fears.
A few things.
So we'd be safer if we ban bathtubs than we'd be by fighting jihadi terrorism (or maybe we just ban assault tubs?)?
Bathtubs don't hate us and we can safely put bathtubs in our homes without worrying they will become radicalized and decide to kill us because we are unclean.
If you search for "bathtub safety standards site:.gov" which restricts hits to government sites, you get 36,000 hits. So apparently the government does a lot to reduce those deaths rather than shrugging and telling us bathtub deaths are hardly an existential threat to America, so just endure it.
Our military and intelligence agencies are our first line of defense for fighting terrorist enemies abroad. Use them as much as we use regulations for tub safety, eh?
And the president is really citing Israel for their resilience when he also complains when the Israelis actively strike back at terrorist havens outside of Israel?
Fine. Let's have Israeli resilience--and I see no evidence the American people are panicked as some on the Left charge rather than determined to kill our terrorist enemies.
But let's also use those military and intelligence tools to strike back at the terrorists to kill them and end the threat. At some point, constantly getting their asses handed to them will convince all but the truly committed jihadi that perhaps Allah really isn't on their side.
And for God's sake, keep Secretary of State John Kerry and his favorite musicians away from the problem. Nobody is resilient enough to endure that for long.
