http://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2015/03/23/why-americans-dont-care-about-isis-n1974503/printWhy Americans Don’t Care About ISIS
Rachel Alexander
3/23/2015 12:01:00 AM
Lately, conservative pundits like Glenn Beck and Hugh Hewitt have been questioning why America seems so apathetic about ISIS. Beck says Americans don’t realize how serious Islamic terrorism has become; we are on the verge of World War III. ISIS has expanded under Obama, even though, as I pointed out in my last column, he is one of the most warmongering presidents ever.
We see the horrifying images of prisoners in orange jumpsuits about to be beheaded everywhere now in the news, but not much seems to happen in response. These images have worsened into chilling photos of Christians burned alive, yet nothing changes. Ancient relics are being destroyed by these barbarians, erasing centuries-old treasured records of Biblical days. Thousands are slaughtered every month by the 30,000 to 50,000 jihadists now fighting with ISIS, and young boys are recruited into the army and girls kidnapped and sold into sex slavery.
Meanwhile, Americans continue to go about their daily lives as if there is no war going on, centered on their smartphones and Starbucks coffee, mostly oblivious to the increase in the most depraved mass murders taking place during most of our lifetimes.
Instead of a leader like Ronald Reagan, who bravely declared the former Soviet Union an “Evil Empire,” we have a president who deliberately confuses over one and a half billion Muslims in the world with Islamic terrorism, so that Americans are afraid to criticize the jihadists for fear of offending all Muslims.
Obama also has everyone believing if they criticize the terrorists, the terrorists will react and execute more Westerners. The reality is, the terrorists are going to continue to execute more Westerners as long as they are allowed to thrive. They are evil and cannot be negotiated with, as history has taught us time and time again about barbarians.
Israel is the number one target of these savages, geographically located where it could be a real asset for taking them on, yet Obama blew off Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reelection, hoping he would lose to an appeaser who would conduct peace talks with Hamas as Obama had urged.
Willingly or naively choosing to ignore the growing threat of ISIS, Obama’s foreign policy is all over the map, guided by Vice-President Biden, who former Defense Secretary Robert Gates described as “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Obama’s handling of ISIS entails reacting to a few incidents a little too late and a little too weak.
The Arab Spring uprisings, which began in 2010, have not led to democracies, but to more violence and the annihilation of Christians. Roughly 90 percent of Iraq’s Christians have disappeared since the first Gulf War in 1990-91.
French political analyst and philosopher Regis Debray further expounded on the reasons behind the apathy, "The victims are 'too Christian' to excite the Left, and 'too foreign' to excite the Right." Political writer Michael Brendan Dougherty contrasts the apathy with the noisy American reaction to Russia hosting the Olympic games. He exposed the irony, “Western activists and media have focused considerable outrage at Russia's laws against "homosexual propaganda" in the lead-up to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics,” he said. “It would only seem fitting that Westerners would also protest (or at the very least notice) laws that punish people with death for converting to Christianity.”
Americans’ apathy is akin to a frog in a pot of water that is slowly heating up, not realizing what is happening until it is too late. ISIS’s jihadist violence is increasing, but the more it increases, the more Americans seem to tune it out. The terrifying part about this apathy is ultimately it will lead to ISIS on our doorsteps. The terrorists leading the jihads come from wealthy, connected backgrounds, and as we saw in the past on 9-11, have the means to attack us undetected if we are not actively rooting them out.
There will be no rallying of Americans against ISIS until we have a president in the White House again like Ronald Reagan who will lead the way. As long as Obama jokes about ISIS as “junior varsity,” and believes that addressing climate change is more important than combating terrorism, Americans will continue to naively think we are safe. Martin Niemoller’s famous quote is eerily coming true again, “First they came for the Jews….” Well, now they’re coming for the Christians, other Islamic sects, and members of the media. The rest of us Americans are next, and we’re sitting ducks under this president.
