HEARTACHE.
Thomas L. Friedman is breaking up with President Obama.
Cannot believe this piece.
Read the whole thing.
"Last week the conservative columnist Rich Lowry wrote an essay
in Politico Magazine that contained quotes from White House spokesman
Josh Earnest that I could not believe. I was sure they were made up. But
I checked the transcript: 100 percent correct. I can’t say it better
than Lowry did:"
“The
administration has lapsed into unselfconscious ridiculousness. Asked
why the administration won’t say [after the Paris attacks] we are at war
with radical Islam, Earnest on Tuesday explained the administration’s
first concern ‘is accuracy. We want to describe exactly what happened.
These are individuals who carried out an act of terrorism, and they
later tried to justify that act of terrorism by invoking the religion of
Islam and their own deviant view of it."
"President Obama knows better. I am all for restraint on the issue, and
would never hold every Muslim accountable for the acts of a few. But it
is not good for us or the Muslim world to pretend that this spreading
jihadist violence isn’t coming out of their faith community."
(He may "know" better, but that's his position and he ain't gonna budge.)
"Only Sunni Arabs and Pakistanis can get inside their narrative and
remediate it. But reformers can only do that if they have a free, secure
political space. If we’re not going to help create space for that
internal dialogue, let’s just be quiet. Don’t say stupid stuff.
And don’t hold airy fairy conferences that dodge the real issues, which
many mainstream Muslims know and are actually starved to discuss,
especially women."