Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Stunningly (okay, maybe I am not as stunned as I could be), the Obama Administration’s State Department has succeeded in achieving the same stunted intellect toward the threats made by violent Islamists as was held by our government in the days before September 11, 2001. The critical mass moment came in the announcement that State Department rejects the Islamic State’s claim that is it at war with US.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

“The State Department downplayed comments from Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS) leaders that they are at war with America, arguing that their violence is not directed at any particular country or race.

“At a briefing Thursday, a reporter brought up anti-American comments from ISIL leaders: ‘I mean, even they are announcing, ISIL people in their message, whatever, the recorded message, other messages, that now we are in a war with America.’

“‘This is not about ISIL versus the United States,’ State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf objected. ‘They are killing anyone who gets in their way: Sunnis, Shia Muslims, Christians, Yazidis, Iraqis, Syrians, anyone who gets in their way — and now an American.'”

At almost the very same moment, The Washington Times reports:

“Sunni radicals with the Islamic State terrorist group have posted a number of tweets aimed at the citizens of Chicago, including a picture of an unidentified man on Michigan Avenue holding a paper with a handwritten Arabic message: ‘We are in your streets’…

“The location of the tweet was 307 N. Michigan Avenue at the city’s Old Republic Building, Chicago’s WGN network reported Friday. The tweet, dated June 20, allegedly says, ‘Soldiers of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria will pass from here soon.'”

Stupid is as stupid does. But this is a very special kind of stupid. It is an almost exact replication of what happen in both 1996 and again in 1998, when the US State Department – and, indeed, the entirety of the US government – ignored Osama bin Laden’s two declarations of war against the United States. The result of this arrogant attitude came in the slaughter of 2,977 people and an additional 1,140 responders and people who worked, lived or studied in Lower Manhattan at the time who have since been diagnosed with cancer.

One has to wonder. Is the Obama Administration so inept; so ill-qualified to lead, that it simply doesn’t understand the immediate danger our country’s people face? Is it that they are just so incredibly immersed in their ideology that they would be willing to watch our people plummet, burning in the skies, from another skyscraper? Or is it that this administration is literally sympathetic to the Islamist cause?

That last thought would have warranted the “conspiracy theory” label just a year or two ago. Now, frighteningly, it has become a legitimate question.