An Obama bundler, who is now our ambassador to France, was the highest-ranking official to represent the United States at the Paris march against Islamic terrorism over the weekend.
No senior administration figure, including President Obama, who generally digs basking in the spotlight at international gatherings, attended. The Politico headline cannot be improved upon: French Kiss Off.
Here is what a White House official anonymously told CNN about the president’s absence:
On Sunday night, a White House official who also asked not to be named added: "It is worth noting that the security requirements for both the President and (Vice President) can be distracting from events like this – for once this event is not about us!"
The official did not address how other prominent world leaders were able to work around the security requirements.
Let me get this straight: President Obama, who has vastly reduced our prestige abroad, is still such a rock star that his security requirements prevent him from joining 44 other world leaders marching for western freedom in Paris.
Apparently, President Obama had more important things to do: watch the NFL playoffs instead.
Don’t get me wrong: a big march in Paris is probably not the best way to fight blood-thirsty, Islamic terrorists. Clarice Feltman pillories the posturing we’ve seen in the wake of the Paris massacre in an article headlined “Je Suis Sick and Tired of Cant.” Moi aussi.
The Paris marchers said a number of patently untrue things. “We are not afraid,” proclaimed journalists who would cower rather than print the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that inspired the massacre. These cartoons are germane to the news story, but don’t count on the we-are-not-afraid crowd to publish them. They are afraid–and with good reason. But the pictures are now news pictures.
And what about the slogan that “the pen is mightier than the sword?” Leaving aside that the pen often writes very stupid things, this slogan is, alas, not borne out by history. The sword is often a lot mightier–and much. much swifter!–than the pen. Ditto the AK-47. But the marchers like this slogan because it indicates that you don't have to actually do anything about terrorism. It will just go away because–you know, the pen is mightier than the sword.
Still, the United States should have been in Paris. The president, the vice president or, at the least, Monsieur Kerry should have been there. It was major European event and it was one time that Europe actually dared to stand up and speak out against terrorism with one voice (even though this could very well be a passing phenomenon–remember our brief and shallow support for the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram?) With the right leadership, however, the march in Paris just could have signaled a turning point. As usual, that leadership would have to have come from the United States.
Aside from the allure of those NFL playoffs, there is likely another reason President Obama didn't care to go to Paris.
PJ Media's Roger Simon posits that President Obama didn’t show in Paris because still can’t face that—how shall I put this?—there is an Islamicist angle on terror. The marchers, at least for a brief weekend, were mostly willing to acknowledge this:
There had to have been a reason for his non-attendance and the bizarre dissing of this event by his administration. I believe it stems from this: There are two words our president seems constitutionally unable to put together — “Islamic” and “terrorism.” For Obama (and, as a sideshow, the zany Howard Dean), these terms are mutually exclusive, an oxymoron.
Appearing in Paris, Obama might be put in the unusual position of having to link them, our complaisant press rarely having the nerve to ask such an impertinent question. [Attorney General Eric] Holder, in a television interview from Paris (I think it was CNN — there have been so many), danced around the question, hemming and hawing as if he couldn’t quite make out what was being said or had been asked an embarrassing question about IRS emails.
He should have gone to Paris.
This isn't even leading from behind.