Harf Truths and Whole Lies
Can political correctness defeat terrorism?
By JAMES TARANTO
Feb. 17, 2015 4:07 p.m. ET
Poor Marie Harf. The State Department’s deputy spokesman is being mercilessly mocked for an interview she gave to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews in which she said, of the conflict with the Islamic State: “We cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s a lack of opportunity for jobs, whether—”
Marie Harf PHOTO: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
At which point, as the Washington Timesnotes, Matthews cut her off and challenged her—unsuccessfully. “Ms. Harf dug in and insisted improving the economic opportunities for the terrorist group is the key to turning back their terror.”
“Can’t win,” tweeted Rachel Palmer. “When they are employed its [sic] called work place violence.” The Washington Free Beacon’s Sonny Bunch imagines Harf’s advice to past military leaders from Themopylae to World War II. Here’s her advice to Patton: “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by curing poverty in the other poor dumb bastard’s country!”
As funny as it is, it also feels a bit unsporting to pick on Harf like this. After all, she’s just doing her job, which is to act as a mouthpiece for an administration whose guiding principle seems to be that political correctness—which is to say, a thoroughgoing dishonesty—is the best weapon for dealing with Islamic terrorism.
Sometimes they even admit it. “We all agree that the individuals who perpetuated . . . the terrorist attacks in Paris and elsewhere are calling themselves Muslims and their warped interpretation of Islam is what motivated them to commit these acts,” a “senior administration official” said in a White House conference call yesterday. “They’re not making any secret of that, and neither are we.”
The unnamed official’s next words: “But we are very, very clear that we do not believe that they are representing Islam. There is absolutely no justification for these attacks in any religion.”
We suppose he’s right that the administration isn’t “making any secret of that.” They’reaggressively denying it.
Last week we noted that in an interview with Vox.com, President Obama himself had described last month’s massacre at a kosher supermarket in Paris as “random.” Vox’s Matthew Yglesias wrote a follow-up article lamenting that his own interview had made news. Obama’s “random” remark, Yglesias insisted, was just a random slip of the tongue.
Events since prove otherwise. On Saturday 22-year-old Omar Abdel Hamid el-Hussein opened fire in a Copenhagen cafe where a free-speech panel was under way; among the participants was a Swedish cartoonist who had been denounced by Muslims for depictions of Muhammad, the Islamic prophet. Hussein missed the cartoonist but killed a Danish film director. Later he opened fire again and killed a security guard at a synagogue—or, as the president might call it, a random sanctum.
Don’t laugh—the White House’s official response, from National Security Council spokesman Bernadette Meehan, didn’t get any more specific than “deplorable shooting.”
On Sunday the Islamic State released “video purporting to show the mass beheading of Coptic Christian hostages,” the Associated Press reports from Cairo:
The militants had been holding 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians hostage for weeks, all laborers rounded up from the city of Sirte [Libya] in December and January. . . .The video, released Sunday night, depicts several men in orange jumpsuits being led along a beach, each accompanied by a masked militant. The men are made to kneel and one militant, dressed differently that the others, addresses the camera in North American-accented English.“All crusaders: safety for you will be only wishes, especially if you are fighting us all together. Therefore we will fight you all together,” he said. “The sea you have hidden Sheikh Osama Bin Laden’s body in, we swear to Allah we will mix it with your blood.”Was that what Obama had in mind when he invoked the Crusades and lectured Christians to get off their “high horse”?
At any rate, the administration’s response, this time from the White House press secretary, made no mention of crusaders or even Christians. It begins: “The United States condemns the despicable and cowardly murder of twenty-one Egyptian citizens.” Are we supposed to believe the killers were angry about immigrants’ taking their jobs?
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