Obama Still In Denial About ISIS

The video of a Jordanian pilot being burned alive by ISIS was a gruesome reminder of why radical Islam must be defeated. Yet President Obama barely acknowledged it.

He merely issued a vague condemnation of the attacks, refusing to even mention ISIS by name. Nor did he address the threat posed by radical Islam, instead saying that ISIS is driven by a “bankrupt ideology.”

Obama has been responding to terrorism with deflections and dismissals for far too long.

When a Muslim extremist de-capitated an Oklahoma factory worker last year, his administration treated it as “workplace violence.”

When fundamentalists shot up the offices of Charlie Hebdo, he refused to send a representative to France to honor the victims.

When ISIS first appeared, he brushed them off as a nuisance that could be handled by the Iraqi Army.

Ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away. Despite Obama’s recent insistence in the United States was “stopping” ISIS, ISIS actually holds more territory in Syria than ever before.

Taking on radical Islam will require new ideas. It will require new strategies. It will require leadership.

But first, it will require the President to admit to the public – and perhaps to himself – that the threat exists at all.