which is nice rhetoric and contains some things that are quite right and some simple conflation.
the issue isn't with islam as a religion. i doubt many americans are perturbed that some people believe in allah. the problem is with islam as violent inspiration and islam as a form of politics and law.
political islam challenges almost every value americans hold dear. it permits no division between church and state. it provides a divinely-inspired law. it glorifies jihad as an inspiration for violence. it disqualifies apostasy meaning there's no freedom of religion at all. it taxes non-moslems for choosing differently. it has all sorts of methods of punishment such as execution and amputation most western cultures avoid. it encourages hatred of jews. heck, it even provides rules about fashion and art. etc etc.
so we can wrap the thing in candy floss, we can pretend all religions are the same, we can float at 30,000 feet rhetorically speaking, we can talk about love but you cannot persuade unless you engage in the detail. there's a reason islam is producing terrorists. it's not that all moslems are terrorists. but clearly far more are than those from other religions. if you don't ask the question why, then you are guilty of a dangerous lack of curiosity. and you will never derive useful answers.
conflating islam with other religions ignores the fact that it has broader ambitions. it isn't the same. for sure, no one should respond to islam by treating moslems badly. but also, to ignore the claims that islam makes is to let the problem fester. an islam which promotes sharia, for instance, isn't in accordance with the ideas of jefferson and madison. ignoring this, which is what obama counsels, is wrapping people in cotton wool. worse, it is unconvincing.
encouraging widespread immigration from peoples who don't believe in the values of america and whose children are vested in this opposition to the secular state via their religion creates a toxic genetic inheritance in us society. unless the form of islam changes. so you can embrace the cactus of islam. but it is still going to cut you if you come too close because its spikes are intrinsic. that is, unless you remove those spikes.
if this speech is really the quality of obama's thinking, if he's so enveloped in mushy ideals and so little in reality, then i guess that explains his response and why it is so weak. obama's strategy left isis in place and developing a sort of status quo country with funding from oil that allowed it to pay for its propaganda and its jihad-inspired soldiery. obama's response to people's fears about islam in america is to deliver platitudes that do nothing useful. that just tell people to embrace islam as if it is like any other religion. that says the jihadi terrorists have nothing to do with islam. ouch! why am I bleeding?
the us was not making so much headway against isis with obama's half-hearted, half-baked response. in america, he simply treats islam as a religion of peace when others see the threat it poses and the extent of its ambitions. americans want protection from political islam and the violent inspiration it provides. but obama won't make hard choices. he is america's angela merkel. love is the answer. except sometimes it doesn't fit the problem.
in this sense, paradoxically, obama created trump. trump channels the anxiety which results from the sense that obama isn't addressing the problem.
fortunately, putin sees the problem with isis and is addressing it. he's a guy i generally fear. he's a bully and a crook. if you look into his eyes you see the compassion of a shark. but he understands this sort of issue far better than obama. and he is doing something about it. when there's something evil out there that wants to damage you, you have to crush it.
| 
