After Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old suspected Boston Marathon bomber whose older brother was killed earlier in a shootout, was captured alive on Friday after a extensive manhunt, a dour President Barack Obama addressed the nation. While he was adamant that the American people do not hold these heinous acts against “entire groups of people,” he did not mention radical Islam at all.
In a stoic Friday evening address that was in contrast to the jubilant atmosphere on Boston’s streets, Obama spoke of the “resolve and determination” of those in Boston, sent his condolences to the family of the MIT police officer who was murdered on Friday by the suspects, and praised Boston’s police officers.
He vowed to “determine what happened” and find “any associations these terrorists may have had.” Obama also said, “we’ve seen the character of this country” during this “tough week” and that the people of Boston refused to be intimidated and Americans “refuse to be terrorized.”
He became most animated, though, when speaking about how Americans should not “latch on to any bit of information sometimes to jump to conclusions” before facts are “relentlessly” gathered.
“That’s why we take care not to rush to judgement, not about the motivations of these individuals and certainly not about entire groups of people,” Obama said.
Contrary to what Obama and the mainstream media may think, Americans do not “rush to judgment” without any evidence. In this case, there has already been plenty of pieces of evidence to suggest radical Islam may have influenced the suspected bombers, especially older brother Tamerlan.
In an interview with Russia Today, the mother of the suspects said the FBI “were scared of my oldest son” because “they always told me he’s a leader,” and they were “afraid of him because, you know, he is a leader, he talks about Islam a lot.”
She said her eldest son got involved in “religious politics” five years ago, and the FBI was scared of him because of the information he was getting from “extremist” websites.
But the mother, perhaps like Obama, seemed to be in denial by claiming her sons could not be involved in Jihad and were “set up” by the FBI. The mother claimed the sons would have told her of the terrorist attacks if they really, in her mind, had intended to bomb the Boston Marathon.
On Monday evening, in his first address to the nation after the Boston Marathon bombings, Obama did not refer to the bombings as terrorism. Immediately after he spoke, the White House had to issue a statement that they considered the bombings an “act of terror.”
Obama had to clean up the mess on Tuesday and do damage control in what seemed like a press conference that was called just so Obama could say the words “act of terror” on camera.
Robert Baer, a former CIA official, said on Friday that that there is a “cultural fight” between radical Islam and the West, and the older brother may have “identified with Jihadism” when “he found religion and wanted to defend Islam” because “it gave him meaning.” Even Piers Morgan, Even Piers Morgan, who is largely sympathetic to Obama and his agenda, discussed the suspected bomber’s potential ties to radical Islam on Friday evening.
But the Obama administration consistently seems to be either oblivious to or dismissive of the threat of global Jihad. And while Obama has rightfully warned Americans not to make judgments without evidence, Obama has too often ignored evidence of radical Islam’s influence.
For instance, the Obama administration refused to call the Fort Hood massacre an act of terror, instead referring to it as “workplace violence.” He also took three days to address the nation after the attempted Christmas Day airplane bombing in 2009.
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