Cultural insensitivity

Lacking in a reasonable level of cultural confidence, many western nations have made little to no effort to assimilate immigrants in the last few decades.  The failure to address the resulting behaviors has promoted an escalation of these behaviors.  This Bill Whittle video he explains that contrary to conventional wisdom, failure to deal forcefully with the radical islamists is a provocative weakness that also elicits added support from more moderates.

In the U.S. there is no sign that this approach will change.  The president seems to approach his job with something potentially worse than benign neglect:

"I have talked to people who have worked in the Obama administration who firmly believe he has made up his mind, I would say closed his mind, they say, to the intelligence they try to bring him about various groups he does not consider terrorists even if they're on the U.S. list of designated terrorists," Attkisson said. "I don't know the reasoning for it -- I’ve only been told by those who have allegedly attempted to present him, or been in the circle that has attempted to present him, with certain intelligence that they said he doesn’t want it, he said he doesn't want it or he won't read it in some instances."

Andrew McCarthy provides additional insight while dissecting the recruitment tool canard:

Obviously, jihad does not erupt out of thin air. The American public, which remains widely uninformed about Islam, realizes something must cause the violence, and that the violence will continue unless that something is overcome. For Leftists, this presents a golden opportunity: They understand that our deeply ingrained tradition of religious liberty – a tradition the Left generally abhors – makes the public resistant to the notion that a religion can cause violence, and thus receptive to the assurance that Islam does not. 

So if Islam, in the Left’s telling, has nothing to do with the savagery jihadists commit, what is the cause? Obama and his cohort fill in this blank with … the principles and policies they oppose: robust national defense, American leadership in the world, free speech, sovereignty, economic liberty, income inequality, Christianity, Israel’s character as a Jewish state, Guantanamo Bay, military commissions, … even climate change. 

Yes, this is preposterous if you’ve familiarized yourself with Islamic supremacism and classical sharia. But, alas, much of America has not despite a generation of jihad from Tehran to Manhattan to Paris. What a powerful rhetorical weapon it is for the Left to claim that what it opposes is not just wrong but the cause of mass-murder attacks. 

In the real world, however, it is the sharia supremacist interpretation of Islam that causes jihadist terror. With that as the foundation, jihadist recruitment has little or nothing to do with the pretexts conveniently conjured by the Left. To the contrary, recruitment is driven by one thing: the perception that jihadists will win. As Osama bin Laden recognized, people are drawn to the strong horse and shun the weak horse. 

That is why I cannot think of a more potent recruitment tool for ISIS than … Barack Obama.

(read the whole article)

By acting in what is ultimately a provocative manner, leaders risk increasing the chances that future leaders will be forced to open a giant sized can of whoopass and everything that goes with such an action.