Obama’s Fatal Blind Spot

The day after James Foley’s beheading, President Obama paused his Martha’s Vineyard vacation—to express his condolences to the Foley family and inform Americans of the threat posed by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Listening to him as a Kurd, I had no reason to doubt his sincerity when he said, “Earlier today, I spoke to the Foleys and told them that we are all heartbroken at their loss, and join them in honoring Jim and all that he did.”

What troubled me was the way he qualified ISIS or failed to do.

The man who hails from the “happiest” state, Hawaii, declared ISIS—the “angriest” wannabe state in the world—without a “religion.”

That’s like calling Hitler an internationalist or Lenin a capitalist!

Posing as an authority on Islam, he said, “No faith teaches people to massacre innocents.”

Speaking for the 21st century, he went on, ISIS doesn’t belong to it. 

And then this gem by way of reducing the threat to an understandable sound bite: ISIS is at war with the West “out of expediency,” but it really is at war with its neighbors and offers “nothing but an endless slavery to [its] empty vision.”

I will admit to my immediate reaction: my hand involuntarily went to scratch my head.

The man who labels the Muslim call to prayer one of the “prettiest” sounds in the world has a chillingly shallow grasp of his father and stepfather’s religion as a potential tool for evil.

He has no clue to the ominous threat ISIS poses.

Unfortunately, he’s not the only one.

Mohammed, the first Muslim, initially tried persuasion. But three years proselytized only fourteen people.

He then went public with his message and eventually announced the season of forbearance over and engaged in a series of wars under the violent banner: “Convert or Die.”

Jews and Christians were spared by paying hefty taxes and suffering behavioral restrictions.

“Nonbelieving” Yezidi Kurds—like those recently besieged and butchered on the outskirts of Mount Shingal—received this ultimatum: accept the Quran unconditionally or be slaughtered.

The Yezidis claim 72 massacres by Muslims and last month marked the 73rd attempt to annihilate them from the face of the earth—naturally in the benevolent name of God and Mohammed.

This same religion seized upon a declining Persian state, a fading Roman Empire and a degenerating Europe to hoist its black banner over three continents.

It divided the world into two realms: the abode of believers—Dar al-Islam and those of nonbelievers or war—Dar al-Harb.

It was finally checked at the gates of Vienna, Austria about one thousand years after its birth.

But while it was rising, just as the European states created colonies throughout the Middle East at the dawn of 20th century, Mohammed’s caliphs did the same in the conquered territories, for example, turned Spain into a Muslim outpost.

Saddam Hussein harkened back to that Islamic “greatness” when he named a Fallujah neighborhood “Andalusia,” offering himself as a candidate for the reenactment of the same.

It was that mindset that declared recalcitrant Sunni Kurds “unbelievers”—with a little bit of help from Quran’s al-Anfal chapter—enabling Arab soldiers to murder Kurdish men and enslave their women as spoils of war in the late 1980s.

And when he was cornered in Kuwait, Quran again was rummaged and quoted, this time the al-Fil chapter, reminding fellow Arabs that God had once sent a flock of birds to stop a Christian army with elephants at Mecca’s gate.

This alluded to the symbol of President Bush’s Republican Party, comparing it to the real elephants of Prince Abrahah, supposedly chased out of Mecca by rock-throwing birds.

Saddam left Yezidis somewhat alone provided they did not clamor for independence from Iraq.

But not the puritanical Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi of ISIS.  He brands most Kurds as “nonbelievers” who must either convert to his version of Islam or be killed—and their wives and daughters forced to “comfort” his fanatics.

Both, the hypocrite Saddam Hussein and the “strict constructionist” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, liked and like their Kurds docile and obedient willing to do their dirty work for the sake of their versions of Islam.

President Obama, despite his misguided view of Muslim fanatics, deserves at least one backhanded compliment for calling them “nihilistic.”

One ancient “nihilistic” believer from Mecca, answering his caliph’s call for conquest, described a black-eyed girl so beautiful “all mankind would die for,” beckoning him to her from paradise—and apparently got his wish when a javelin gutted him in the present day Syria.

Sadly, with America in retreat—or still cavorting with tottering dictators in the Middle East—and Europe indifferent to wars, Kurds present the only fighting force capable of blunting the ISIS advance toward imperialist Islam.

But if you look at the balance of weapons alone, Kurds are outgunned. ISIS displays sophisticated American weaponry while Kurds have so far been allowed to buy out of date relics from Europe.

The current occupant of White House at another occasion compared Middle East nihilists to a “wolf” at the gate of Iraq.  He was, in his own ways, threatening Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to unite and fight the ISIS wolf together or face oblivion.

I wish he would see the handwriting on the wall and let go of the abominable concoction of European colonialists, the state of Iraq—the prison for five million Kurds.

Going back to his “wolf” analogy, the ISIS that believes the birds of the sky are its natural allies is not beyond showing up, unannounced, at the gate of the White House as well!

It also doesn’t give a damn whether a Democrat donkey or GOP elephant occupies the place.

Like the fabled fox blaming the trap, not his judgment, Mr. Obama, alas, often faults others, primarily his predecessors, for his troubles.

That, I am afraid, won’t outfox ISIS!

One of the best ways to do it is to give Kurds the weapons they need to limit the damage that these fanatics are causing to the human family. 

We don’t choose the times that are our lot, but we can use the means at our disposal to make them peaceful, secure, promising and hopeful in our merciless world.

The times call not for equivocation or procrastination, but boldness, the kind that will give the Kurds a fighting chance to prevail against the fanatics of ISIS.