On the day before the Pearl Harbor anniversary (which he did not reference), President Obama admitted that “Our nation has been at war with terrorists since Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11,” including horrors that his Administration previously dismissed as workplace violence. While much of what he said seemed to deny the reality of war, the last fourth of the speech raises the key question of what Muslims owe the rest of the world in this time of war.
Predictably, the speech repeated Obama’s signature call for unity, while brandishing partisan daggers of gun and border control against Republicans. But on the San Bernardino terrorists themselves he was not as infuriating as he was the day before when he theorized in his weekly radio address, “It is entirely possible that these two attackers were radicalized to commit this act of terror. And if so, it would underscore a threat we’ve been focused on for years—the danger of people succumbing to violent extremist ideologies.” In his classic essay, “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell reminded us of the perils of the passive voice—isn’t the important thing here who was doing the radicalizing and spreading “violent extremist ideologies”? But being on “the right side of history” absolves one of a lot of responsibility.
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