Yesterday I participated in my club’s annual 4^th of July golf tournament. Because I usually dress sloppily and in haste, I headed to the course wearing a “W 2004” hat.

One of my partners asked me twice on the first hole whether if I knew then what I know, would I have still voted for “Dubs”. I was a little curt in saying yes, and not just because I pushed my drive into the right hand trees and found myself in a sour mood. When pressed for why I would cast my ballot in the same way, I responded with the inarguable and hopefully debate-ending point that John Kerry would have been a worse president. I also didn’t feel like defending President Bush. Been there, done that, gotten real sick of it. (Happily, we put aside our political incompatibilities and finished a strong 2^nd Gross.)

The image above comes to us courtesy of Scott Johnson, the Most Valuable Powerliner. It was taken during a George W. Bush address to Washington DC’s Islamic Center. The cause for the president’s speech was to celebrate the appointment of a special envoy to the Saudi-sponsored and Wahhabi-funded Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). As Steve Emerson notes, this appointment shows “complete ignorance of the rampant radicalism, pro-terrorist, and anti-American sentiments routinely found in statements by the OIC and its leaders.” Note how in the picture the president’s female aides have donned make-shift hijabs, sadly symbolizing our attempt to make nicey-nice with the psychotics that want to destroy us.

In his speech, the president hit a theme that he has pounded with some regularity the past six years. Each time he returns to it, he shows how little he has learned during this long war that is still just beginning:

We admire and thank those Muslims who have denounced what the Secretary General of the OIC called "radical fringe elements who pretend that they act in the name of Islam…" We will work toward a day when a democratic Palestine lives side by side with Israel in peace. (Applause.)

Applause? I think hysterical laughter would have been more appropriate. Or perhaps tears. The Palestinian statelet has had something like democracy for over a decade. The winners have been the amoral killer Yasser Arafat, and, after Arafat’s long overdue demise, the psychotic killers of Hamas. Sadly, neither the Palestinian population nor its leadership class has shown any interest in living “side by side with Israel in peace.”

Worse still is the president’s wholesale embrace of the OIC’s pernicious lie that all we’re fighting are “radical fringe elements who pretend that they act in the name of Islam.” As the House of Saud knows all too well, if there were free elections in Saudi Arabia, those “fringe elements” personified by al Qaeda would win handily. In Egypt, the same thing holds with the Muslim Brotherhood playing the role of the “fringe elements” that in truth enjoy the support of the majority of the population. In Palestine? Well, we’ve already seen how things are working out there. The same arguably holds true for the entire region. Perhaps ironically, the sole exception may be Iraq where the heterogeneous nature of the population makes some sort of peaceful accommodation with “the other” a practical imperative.

IN HIS SPEECH TO THE ISLAMIC CENTER, the president also offered a relatively stirring piece of rhetoric that was jarringly out of place:

This is what freedom offers: societies where people can live and worship as they choose without intimidation, without suspicion, without a knock on the door from the secret police. The freedom of religion is the very first protection offered in America's Bill of Rights. It is a precious freedom. It is a basic compact under which people of faith agree not to impose their spiritual vision on others, and in return to practice their own beliefs as they see fit. This is the promise of our Constitution, and the calling of our conscience, and a source of our strength.

Does the president still not realize that the hundreds of millions of people who like the idea of Sharia have no interest in such a society? Truth be told, they’re quite fond of the idea of a secret police making sure everyone is behaving in appropriate 7^th century fashion. And they really don’t like the idea of the Jew, Christian or Zoroastrian next door going about his business sans molestation.

The president is right to reach out to moderate Muslims. And he’s right to acknowledge that we have friends in the Islamic world who prefer the 21^st century to the 7^th. But his ongoing minimizing of the problem is scandalous for either its obtuseness or its outright mendacity.

I’M IN THE PROCESS OF PREPARING A STORY on what I call the Next Greatest Generation, the young people who are rising up to face an enormous challenge, the ones who are dedicating themselves to what will likely be a generation of war. These are amazing kids – they have chosen boot camp over investment banking.

At the other extreme, we have our president who with nothing left to lose politically either refuses to understand the challenge ahead of us or refuses to confront and condemn it. Happily, as Daniel Pipes points out, his potential Republican successors are “taking up (the) difficult concepts of Islamic extremism, Shariah, and the caliphate.”

The fact that the president has shirked those duties is an unhappy part of his legacy.

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