Obama's Fort Hood Memorial: No Mention of Terrorism or Jihad

I read the president's memorial speech earlier. The text is here. As always, the speech is both respectful and reserved, and I'm confident the president's talk will help many families with their grief and recovery. But frankly, there's little more than anodyne language here -- we have simply no repudiation of the Islamic extremism that drove Nidal Malik Hasan's attack. I know there's a way to denounce the fanaticism while reassuring moderate Muslims that our quarrel is not with them. But the president has no time for that. Whether it's his own Islamic background, his Marxist ideological upbringing (with its romance of tyranny and terror), or his fawning sensitivity to the Democratic terror-coddling base, Barack Obama is simply unsuited for the fight facing this country in radical Islam. I'll update with some of the partisan spin forthcoming tonight. In the meanwhile, Phyllis Chesler puts into words my own thinking as I read the speech earlier today. See, "Obama at Ft. Hood Memorial: No Mention of Terrorism or Jihad":

Radical jihadic Islamism/jihadic terrorism was given a free pass by the President of the United States at the Memorial Service for the thirteen soldiers and mental health professionals who were slaughtered at Ft. Hood.

See also, Victor Davis Hanson, "Sacrificing Americans," especially this:

Bottom line: The society at large, driven by the sermonizing of its elites, has come to an unstated conclusion that, unfortunately, a few Americans will have to be sacrificed from time to time, for the larger goal of establishing the fact that Americans in no way think Muslims are any more likely than any others to commit either random or premeditated terrorist violence. I think that is the initial lesson of Fort Hood.