Monday night’s The Kelly File hosted by FNC’s Martha MacCallum, held an interesting debate over the State Department’s refusal to condemn radical Islam in the recent attacks in Brussels and Pakistan. Guest Larry Korb, former Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, defended the State Department’s reticence while guest Brooke Goldstein, Director for the Law Fair Project with MacCallum pressed Korb to explain why it was so difficult to state the obvious perpetrators and victims in these terrorist attacks.
MacCallum began the segment by asking Goldstein to explain “why” the State Department would refuse to acknowledge that the recent attack in Pakistan on Easter Sunday targeted Christians, despite it being Christianity’s most holy day.
Goldstein responded:
[Y]ou know, I want to give the State Department some credit here. It only took them 24 hours to state the obvious that a Talibani suicide bomber that blew up on Easter Sunday targeted Christians intentionally, but it's symptomatic of a bigger issue.
She continued to explain why the public is upset over the politically correct Obama Administration:
GOLDSTEIN: The reason why people are so angry that this initial presser didn't say radical Islam just like the Brussels presser didn't say that, it's because there is a pattern of behalf of the State Department, the Obama administration, that is a failure to identify the basic motive of theologically motivated terrorists. The reason why they kill innocent civilians, innocent children, in such a brutal fashion, is not poverty, is not economic reasons. It's theologically motivated. And we have an administration that fails to even state the term "Radical Islam," that uses counterterrorism training manuals that are devoid of the words "Islam" or "jihad" and it frankly does not instill confidence in the American public that we know how to defeat this theologically motivated threat which is radical Islam.
At this point MacCallum pointed out the “farce” of the Administration and media trying to disconnect terrorist attacks from the theme of radical Islam.
MACCALLUM: I mean, I want to point out this Taliban group also has pledged allegiance to ISIS. Right? So the idea that these are disparate attacks that are happening around the world, that have no common theme, that is Islamic radicalism, is a farce, frankly, at this point. Larry Korb, why, explain to me any rational reason for not connecting the dots of these and treating them as if they were the fight of our generation and a form of fascism or any other fight that a generation has had to fight in the past.
Korb responded by insisting that the most important thing was that the State Department condemned the attacks in the first place:
KORB: Well, the State Department did condemn the attacks. They didn't say that they were directed at Christians right away because the Pakistani government said that it wasn't.
MacCallum responded, “What's lacking is a leadership call to fight this for what it is.” She continued:
A lot of people do look at the president in Cuba and dancing the tango in Argentina and they wonder where that is, where does that come from.
Goldstein echoed MacCallum,“Yeah, I mean, it sends the message that we don't take this seriously when we have a President doing the wave when people are mopping up blood in Brussels. I mean, we exist in a time of Islamophobamania.” She repeated, “Just call it for what it is, radical Islam. Every time someone blows themselves up do we have to have a segment on what is the real Islam, what is the fake Islam?”
After Korb insisted again, “They condemned the attack right away,” MacCallum shot back with the obvious, “Who wouldn’t condemn the attack right away?”
Ending the segment, MacCallum stated, “Condemnation is easy. Everybody condemns this. It's the next steps we seem to have a tough time with sometimes.”
The Obama Administration and media’s censoring of the words “Islamic terrorism” has been long covered by Newsbusters, from the networks refusing to identify ISIS as Islamic or the Secretary to the Department of Homeland Security telling the media to purposefully avoid using the word “Islam” in terrorism reports, the censorship is clear and deliberate.
