The silence was even more noticeable on Tuesday when President Obama held a press conference in Washington to announce his selection for secretary of the Army. While blah-blahing about preparing our soldiers "to meet the challenges of our time," the president failed to note the "challenge" of homegrown jihad that had tragically cost Pvt. Long his life and put his comrade in the hospital. And then Obama was off on his own jarringly personal mission of perpetual outreach to the Islamic world, this time setting out in Sharia-ruled, oil- and jihad-exporting Saudi Arabia. "I thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began and to seek his majesty's counsel," Obama said on Wednesday.

The place where Islam began? Spare us. How about the president instead going to the place where Islam ended the life a U.S. soldier, an unexpected casualty of jihad in the young man's own back yard?

Little Rock is where the president of the United States should have traveled this week to address the Muslim world. There, he should have declared that the 21st century era of Islamic jihad is over, that Pvt. Long had not died in vain, that his memory would be served by a new American resolve to join with its kindred allies in liberty to contain and ultimately reverse the militarily- and demographically pressed advance of Sharia (Islamic law) across the non-Muslim world.

But such a pilgrimage to the heart of America to denounce jihad obviously doesn't interest Barack Obama. Not when he could make a pilgrimage to the heart of Islam where jihad is a sacred institution. Finally, on Wednesday afternoon, as criticism of the president's silence began to achieve a critical Internet mass, a statement came from the White House: "I am deeply saddened by this senseless act of violence ..." it said.

"Saddened"? "Senseless"? What dishwater-weak words to use about what the shooter himself is said to have described as an Islamically motivated attack on U.S. troops. Of course, from the president's bully pulpit in Cairo, such talk is sure to go down smoothly with his newest, most sought-after constituency.