In his commentary segment on Tuesday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Special Report,” Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume explained how in his view the Obama administration has been able to downplay the threat of terrorism and therefore avoid taking more aggressive action.
Hume said the White House has been narrowly defining terrorist threats and thus making them seem not as much of threat to the United States.
“One way the Obama administration and its defenders have warded off calls for more aggressive action in this increasingly messy and dangerous world is by defining enemies as narrowly as possible. Thus al Qaeda became not a growing extremist movement but a much smaller entity known as core al Qaeda. Once Osama bin laden had been killed al Qaeda was considered basically defeated or decimated as some like to say. Al Qaeda offshoots and affiliates might be attacked with an occasional drone strike but were treated as secondary threats.
“The president’s dismissal of ISIS formerly known as al Qaeda as a junior varsity operation is the best example. But you can hear echoes of same thinking of the president’s defenders hesitancy to act aggressively in other areas. Intervention in Ukraine, even indirect as sending weapon is resisted on the basis that the bite Vladimir Putin is taking out of Ukraine is no threat to the U.S. homeland. The lack of urgency about a strategy to defeat ISIS in Syria is defend on the same basis. The president evidently has determined not to do anything stupid by about these current crises. By stupid, he particularly means waging war. And his backers cite polls showing the public doesn’t think much of war, which raises this question: With the commander-in-chief downplaying the threats, why would people think anything else?”
Hume went on to add that should ISIS continue to act in such a brutal manner, it could awaken the “sleeping giant” and that would result to its detriment.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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