Political analyst Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News Monday that he thinks “deep down” President Obama doesn’t believe in the war on terror because he thinks we are the ones who have really “provoked” it.
Suggesting that Obama was forced by advisers to give his Oval Office address Sunday on the war against ISIS, Krauthammer argued that Obama resents having to oversee the war on terror.
“His problem since the day he took office, he never wanted to fight the war on terror. He abolished the term,” said Krauthammer (video below). “I think deep down he believes the war on terror was a gross overreach.”
The reason Obama believes it’s such an “overreach”: America is ultimately to blame for having “provoked” the violence.
“He said that in his speeches when he went abroad in 2009. He talked about America overreacting. And in a sense that we have provoked this,” Krauthammer continued. He says, if you talk about the Muslims in a bad way, that recruits for ISIS. Guantanamo is a recruiter for ISIS. When the fact is that the cruelty and the savagery and the ideology is a recruiter for ISIS.”
In a more TV-friendly summation of Obama’s “don’t do stupid sh*t” foreign policy, Krauthammer said that since Obama “locates the origin of all that recruiting in what we do” he believes “the cure is to do as little as possible.”
“It’s an insane strategic view of the world, but he actually holds it,” he said. “And I think that’s why the American people are so scared. He’s our leader and he believes that?”
Immediately following the president’s widely panned ISIS speech, Krauthammer provided a blistering critique of the address, which he said in both “substance and tone” was a “complete failure.”
The substance, he announced nothing new on strategy on the ground, except he argued against ground troops, which is a political point. But as to anything he’s adding to his strategy, there was nothing to encourage any sense that we’re going to do any better. This idea that this distraction into gun control I think is really cynical. The idea that the no-fly zone is an important issue. Look, anything that will keep a gun out of the hands of Steve Hayes I think is useful. But these two assailants were not on any list. They were completely under the radar. They live in the state with the strongest gun control probably in the country. Assault weapon bans, magazine limits, and universal background checks. And they were entirely undetected. This is a way to change the subject, and I think he continued in that vein. What he said about Muslim-Americans, I think that’s a good thing to do. George Bush did that four days after 9/11. At the same time, he launched a real war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan that was ultimately successful in driving them out of that country.