Orlando and the Obama Administration's Farcical Obscurantism

By Kit

A week and a half ago, a few hours after midnight on Sunday, Omar Mateen entered The Pulse, a nightclub oriented towards gays, and opened fire. By the time he was taken down by the Orlando PD 3 hours later he had killed 49 of the revelers present and wounded nearly the same number. It is the worst mass shooting in American history (not carried out by the federal government) and, given the statements made by the mass shooter, the worst terrorist attack on US soil since September 11, the fifth major Radical Islamist attack in the West since Charlie Hebdo was hit almost a year ago.

While it is true there is no proof that he was directly linked to ISIS as they hate to be called, in that he never visited Syria and never received training from any members of ISIS he was clearly influenced by their views. Through it’s leader, Al-Baghdadi, and it’s official magazine it has called upon Muslims living in the “Crusader nations” (US, Europe, Canada, etcetera) who cannot travel to Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State there to carry out attacks upon non-believers with guns or, if they lack guns, then knives, rocks, and cars. They only request that before, during, or immediately after the attack you make a recorded statement declaring loyalty to the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Mr. Mateen, as New York Times’ reporter Rukmini Callimachi diligently noted in her various daily 50-tweet series, he knew the lingo; he plead allegiance to Al-Baghdadi in the terminology required by the Islamic State and, like the shooters at the Bataclan, called for the US to cease its bombing campaign in Iraq. Shortly after it was confirmed that he did indeed declare allegiance to Al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s official radio news agency proclaimed him “one of the soldiers of the caliphate of America.”

The evidence is undeniable: This was an Islamist terrorist attack. A lone wolf attack, but an attack nonetheless. He had a history of erratic and unstable behavior, it is true. But he seems to have been nowhere near as unstable as the Tuscon, Aurora, or Navy Yard shooters and hardly moreso than either Elliot Rodgers or Dylann Roof, both of whom were able base their crimes on clear-cut ideological pretexts that did not involve dream control, global currency conspiracies, or microwave emitters. But whereas the Left had no difficulty pinning to Elliot Rodgers and Dylan Roof the ideologies they promoted, with Mr. Marteen they are struggling.

Even while the BBC was calling this “America’s Bataclan,” that is, calling it an Islamic terror attack, our liberal media was busy trying to connect this to the gun rights lobby and Christian conservatives and, therefore, the American Right. Anderson Cooper hammered the Florida Attorney General for representing her state’s opposition to same-sex marriage while the New York Times ludicrously claimed that the Book of Romans in the Bible called for the killing of gays. Meanwhile, our president, used the attacks as a platform to engage in what Charles Cooke rightfully called “emotional blackmail” to call for gun control procedures that would never have stopped the gunman in the first place.

Background checks? He passed them when he bought them. Keep those on the No-Fly List and the Terror Watch List from buying guns? Not only was he given a pass by the FBI after two interviews but very (1) very few Americans are on those lists and (2) the former list involves only names such as Stephen Hayes and Ted Kennedy. I’m serious. Then there are of course the Due Process and 5th Amendment concerns which prompted the ACLU to side against the Left on this. In short, rather than use this as a way to talk about how the US government can better stop terrorists in the future, the Left decided to engage in an idiotic war on the Bill of Rights, pushing measures that would not have stopped the attack.

Speaking of government, that brings me to another topic: The breathtaking incompetence shown by the federal government in its handling of this case. First, when something like this occurs we often wonder “Where were the red flags?” and “Why didn’t Law Enforcement know about him?” and “Did anyone tell the cops about this guy?” Here, the question is who didn’t tell law enforcement about him. This is the list I have gathered so far: a couple of co-workers informed the FBI after he made inflammatory comments about Islamic terrorism, a gun shop owner from whom he tried to purchase weapons, one Mosque attendee also reported him to the FBI because of his support for radical Islam, and the Muslims whom he tried to recruit with him to go to Syria. Oh, and his current wife, who seems to have been aware of what he was planning? During her press conference today Loretta Lynch admitted that the FBI had lost track of her.

I hope Mrs. Mateen is not planning anything involving, say, guns or things that go boom.

But don’t think the fine G-Men and G-Women (we gotta be PC!) at the FBI and the Department of Justice were sitting with their hands on their behinds doing nothing. Nope! On Monday they released the partial transcript of his phone calls to 911 wherein he proclaimed his allegiance to the Islamic State. “Partial” because they deleted the parts referring to the Islamic State. Now, when I heard they had did this I assumed deleted entirely the sentences and passages of the call where he referred to the Islamic State. Therefore, when I saw a bunch of folks on twitter putting out stuff like, “I pledge allegiance to [omitted]” I thought that was just them exaggerating the nature of the edits for jokes.

Here is an excerpt of the partial transcript:

OD: What’s your name?
OM: My name is I pledge of allegiance to [omitted].
OD: Ok, What’s your name?
OM: I pledge allegiance to [omitted] may God protect him [in Arabic], on behalf of [omitted].

Our country is now living out plot-lines too silly for The Veep. Wonderful.