The snake among us

It’s interesting how history has placed the right person in the right place for the right job. Ronald Reagan wanted to be president in 1976, but it was not yet his time. It’s amazing how different the circumstances were four years later and the rest, as they say, is history.

The inability or unwillingness of President Obama to understand and act upon domestic terrorism is one of the driving factors behind the recent Trump surge.

Trump has become fond of reading the lyrics from the song “The Snake,” which was written by the late Oscar Brown, Jr. It’s based on one of Aesop’s fables and tells the story of a woman who takes in a half-frozen snake she found by the side of the road and nurses it back to health only to have the snake turn on her once he’s healthy and kill her with a venomous bite. The snake, of course, represents the terrorists we’re taking in through our ill-conceived refugee program.

Trump gets it. The premise is so simple and rings so true that most Americans get it, too. Ironically, the family of Oscar Brown, Jr. doesn’t. They want Trump to stop using his lyrics. But the story so succinctly incapsulates the times in which we’re living. Obama is that woman. He’s in such denial that he couldn’t even utter the word “terrorism” in connection with the recent bombings and stabbings in New York, New Jersey, and Minnesota. 

Obama claims there’s no connection between the attacks, but there is one obvious and undeniable link. ISIS. For months now, they have been urging followers across the globe to embark on acts of terrorism wherever they live. No one is off limits, according to ISIS, if they turn away from their radical worldview. 

Even when Obama does utter the word “terrorism,” he refuses to use it in the same neighborhood as “Islamic.” However, he’s fond of referring to the current band of barbarians terrorizing the Middle East and Europe as ISIL. The subtle difference is worth noting. ISIS stands for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. ISIL stands for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. That takes in a much bigger swath of the Middle East including Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, and, yes, Israel. This difference is totally ignored by the media. It gives ISIS credit for having influence over a much larger area.

For someone who refuses to say “radical Islamic terrorism,” Obama is saying it every time he mentions ISIL. Not matter if you call them ISIS or ISIL, there’s one commonality. Islamic State. If Obama doesn’t believe the terrorists are truly Muslim, why does he keep referring to them as the Islamic State? If he doesn’t believe the terrorists are truly Muslim, why does he insist on accommodating occupants of Gitmo with Qurans and halal, the Muslim diet?

Obama brags that he’s ahead of schedule in allowing refugees into this country. He wants to bring in another 110,000 next year. We know that ISIS controls several passport offices in Syria. That fact alone makes it clear that we have no way of safely vetting refugees from that country. The FBI has made that clear. We simply don’t know who’s who, yet Obama and Hillary refuse to see the problem for what it is. The American people are starting to see, and Trump’s surge is indicative of it.

The snake has been taken in by naive nations across Europe that ignore its true intention and believe they’re being compassionate. Now, the snake is here, and there’s only one man who’s willing to kill it.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.