In light of today's awful news that at least two Americans were murdered by ISIS terrorists in Brussels, this Washington Free Beacon video feels even more like a gut punch:
Be sure to read Charles Krauthammer's full column today. It cuts Obama priorities to pieces, correctly noting that this is about far more than mere "optics." An excerpt:
The split screen told the story: on one side, images of the terror bombing in Brussels; on the other, Barack Obama doing the wave with Raúl Castro at a baseball game in Havana. On one side, the real world of rising global terrorism. On the other, the Obama fantasy world in which romancing a geopolitically insignificant Cuba — without an ounce of democracy or human rights yielded in return — is considered a seminal achievement of American diplomacy...When Brussels intervened, some argued that Obama should have cut short his trip and come back home. I disagree. You don’t let three suicide bombers control the itinerary of the American president. Moreover, Obama’s next stop, Argentina, is actually important and had just elected a friendly government that broke from its long and corrupt Peronist past. Nonetheless, Obama could have done without the baseball. What kind of message does it send to be yukking it up with Raúl even as Belgian authorities are picking body parts off the floor of the Brussels airport? Obama came into office believing that we had vastly exaggerated the threat of terrorism and allowed it to pervert both our values and our foreign policy. He declared a unilateral end to the global war on terror and has downplayed the threat ever since...
In the face of [world events], Obama remains inert, unmoved, displaying a neglect and insouciance that borders on denial. His nonreaction to the Belgian massacre — his 34-minute speech in Havana devoted 51 seconds to Brussels — left the world as stunned as it was after the Paris massacre, when Obama did nothing. Worse, at his now notorious November news conference in Turkey, his only show of passion regarding Paris was to berate Islamophobes...Whatever the reason, he seems genuinely unmoved by a menace the rest of the world views, correctly, with horror and increasing apprehension. He’s been in office seven years, yet seems utterly fixed on his campaign promises and pre-presidential obsessions: shutting down Gitmo, rapprochement with Iran, engagement with tyrants (hence Havana), making the oceans recede (hence the Paris climate trip). Next we’ll see yet another useless Washington “summit” on yet another Obama idee fixe : eliminating nuclear materials. With the world on fire, the American president goes on ideological holiday.
I'll leave you with this chilling passage from an Associated Press piece about the Belgium massacre, which comes on the heels of new reports that ISIS has deployed hundreds of trained (Western) fighters to Europe to form "interlocking" terrorist cells tasked with carrying out deadly attacks:
Frightening. pic.twitter.com/F7cVrHXh16
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) March 25, 2016