President Obama's Gift

Numerous commentators have rapt ecstatic about our young President. Michael Beschloss imagined Obama's epic IQ in an interview with Don Imus that has become notorious. Our leader has undeniable mass appeal (but so did Hitler), some would say charm and grace, and an almost unparalleled ability to read a speech seamlessly from a teleprompter or script. His innate gifts notwithstanding, Obama has received a gift from an al Qaeda affiliate organization today with the double hotel bombing in Jakarta, Indonesia, a town in which the young Barry Soetoro (aka Barack Hussein Obama) resided. Indonesia was of course the scene of terror attacks during the Bush administration, most notably the Bali outrage, but make no mistake, this is an answer to Obama's vigorous outreach to the Muslim world. The irredentist factions of the religion of Obama's youth believe he is an apostate Muslim heretic who must be resisted to the death. They despise Obama with his olive branch of squeezing Israel every bit as much as they hated Bush, perhaps even more as they see Obama as someone who abandoned their formerly shared faith. This was every bit as much an attack on America, directed at two hotels with deep American connotations as on Indonesia, and targeted perhaps at Jakarta, because as a boy, our President made his home there. The attacks needed neither a vast support network, nor enjoyed broad popular support, but with so many committed Jihadist worldwide, who learned bomb making skills in Afghanistan or Pakistan, from those who learned in Pakistan or Afghanistan, or even from the Internet, the security services recognize that it does not take more than a small cadre to do great damage. In this latest horror, the suicide bombers may have been convinced they were delivering a present to Obama himself with their detonation.