A White House Deeply Confused

President Obama’s spokespersons at the White House and State Department outdid themselves this week exemplifying the administration’s dangerous self-deception about the threats we face.

Following the Islamist terrorist attacks last week on the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket, the White House announced it would hold a summit on “Countering Violent Extremism,” in a statement that did not include the word “terrorism” or any reference to Islamism.

Asked at his briefing yesterday what topics the conference would cover, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest replied that it would discuss “all forms of violent extremism.”

A reporter followed up with the obvious question: “What is the most potent form according to you of extremism? Why isn’t the summit on countering Islamic extremism?”

“[...It's] not just Islamic violent extremism that we want to counter there,” Earnest replied. There are other forms of –”…He was cut off, but presumably the White House Press Secretary was going to respond that “there are other forms of violent extremism.” It’s a shame he didn’t have the opportunity to list them.

The evasion would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. Announcing a summit on “all forms of violent extremism” is like holding a conference promoting “all forms of sincere commitment.” The abstraction drains all meaning from the phrase, and leaves you wondering: with regard to what?

The White House didn’t even have the courage to specify that the topic at hand is violent religious extremism, nonetheless to characterize the extremists as Islamic. Earnest tripped over himself to avoid repeating the reporter’s phrase, speaking of “violent extremism…motivated by those individuals that seek to invoke the name of Islam to carry out these violent attacks.”

On television later that night, Earnest’s State Department colleague Marie Harf was asked by an interviewer about the exchange at the White House:

You know, every time we see this exchange, it seems like the answer is so tortured like it’s so difficult to say what everybody around the world seems to feel so clearly it is and what the leaders have said in Canada and Australia and Paris where they have felt it so potently and personally. They’ve all said quite clearly that the battle is against Islamic extremism. Why is it so hard to say?

Well, it’s not hard to say, but it’s not the only kind of extremism we face…Much of it Islamic, you’re absolutely right, but some of it not. So we’re gonna focus on all the different kinds of extremism with a heavy focus on people who do this in the name of Islam, we would say falsely in the name of Islam, but there are other forms of extremism.

If top Obama administration officials require this degree of self-delusion to host a useless conference that will accomplish nothing, it’s scary to think how incapable they must be of seriously confronting the threats we face. (On Monday–five days after the Paris attacks–Earnest called the suggestion that the terrorists were linked to radical Islamists “an important leap in the construct of the question.”)

This willful avoidance of reality is the obvious explanation for why the White House refused to send a senior representative to the gathering in Paris of dozens of world leaders following the terrorist attacks last week.

Josh Earnest had a difficult time explaining that decision, too, but his predecessor might have done so for him two years ago when he said the White House “questioned the judgement” of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists for satirizing Islamists.

Asked this week if the White House still questioned the cartoonists’ “judgement,” Earnest replied with a string of platitudes that rivaled the Summit on All Violent Extremism for meaninglessness.

“When we are confronted with these kinds of scenarios where we’re balancing basic rights alongside very important responsibilities that must also be exercised, it’s going to always depend on the scenario,” he said. “But what won’t change is our view that that freedom of expression in no way justifies an act of violence against the person who expressed a view. And the President considers the safety and security of our men and women in uniform to be something worth fighting for.”

(That final homily apparently thrown in for good measure, though completely unconnected to French cartoons.)

It shouldn’t be surprising, though, that a White House afraid to utter the words “Islamic” and “terrorism” in the same paragraph would decline to send a senior official to an event that might be seen as expressing solidarity with the cartoonists. We have a “responsibility,” they seem to think, to limit our speech if it would offend fanatics who might kill us.

This same inclination to appeasement was vividly obvious during the violence in cities like Benghazi and Cairo in 2012.

The Obama administration promptly blamed the creator of an obscure and apparently lunatic anti-Muslim film. In fact, the administration made television commercials apologizing to the fanatics for offending them. Our tax dollars paid for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to say, “Let me state very clearly, and I hope it is obvious, that the United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video. We absolutely reject its content and message. America’s commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation.”

President Obama later emphasized at the United Nations his commitment to protecting Islam from offense, when he described how “a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world.” He continued, “Now, I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well.”

We now know that the Benghazi attacks had nothing to do with the film. They were undertaken by dedicated radical Islamists who wanted to kill Americans. As was the massacre of 13 servicemen and women at Fort Hood by a man yelling “Allahu Akbar” while carrying a card declaring himself a soldier of Allah. The administration labeled that attack “workplace violence.”

The Obama team uses every possible excuse to avoid linking radical Islamists and religiously inspired attacks into a clear pattern, and then speaks in abstractions to avoid telling the truth. But there was nothing abstract about what happened in Paris last week, where 17 people died at the hands of terrorists, and the administration’s dishonesty does those victims–as well as the safety of the American people–a shameful disservice.