The Upper Cut: Obama Stuck Between Rock and Hard Place After Kicking Muslim Family Off Plane
He’d better think again. All he really accomplished was to put his boss between a rock and a hard place.
And when Obama gets back from his Hawaiian Christmas vacation (though he probably calls it a “holiday fest” or something), he’s likely to be ticked.
Not that it really matters; Obama has painted himself into a corner either way.
Apparently, a Facebook page in Mahmood’s son’s name and associated with his address listed occupations of “supervisor at Taliban and leader at Al Qaeda” — titles that sound as if they were most likely meant as a joke.
Mahmood’s brother was also reportedly denied entry into Israel some time ago — reports differed as to exactly when — which also seems likely to land someone on the no-fly list.
And, though officials probably didn’t know it at the time, later reports indicated that Mahmood had family members in the United States who attend the same mosque where San Bernardino shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik worshipped.
Those items, taken together, are probably sufficient reason to bar Mahmood from entering the country, at least until they could be looked into. But that’s not going to help the president dig his way out of the hole in which his own statements have trapped him.
Here’s the thing: If Mahmood was rightly prevented from flying to the United States, then the president’s narrative about Americans having nothing to fear from radical Muslims attempting to enter the country has had yet another hole shot in it.
Mahmood is a resident of Great Britain, not Syria or Iraq, and there have been no reports of his visiting any hotbeds of radical Islamic terror in recent years. The vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, Obama tells us, and frankly, we agree. But the peaceful Muslims look very much like Mahmood.
So if he was denied entry into the country, what does that say about our ability to identify those Muslims with no ax to grind with America? It’s a complicated task, at least, and perhaps impossible.
But if Mahmood was wrongfully kept away from spending his life savings at Disneyland, then so much for the reliability of the no-fly list — you know, the one Obama wants to use to prevent Americans from exercising their Second Amendment rights.
No matter what the truth is, Obama is wrong, one way or another.
Oops.
Either way, the president is going to have to explain to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron why one of his citizens was kicked of the flight, as Cameron, under pressure from a fellow Parliament member who represents Mahmood’s neighborhood, has promised to demand answers.
(Personally, I think the best answer would be, “It’s none of your business who we choose to keep outside our borders or why,” but somehow I doubt that’s what our appeaser in chief is going to say.)
Because of Cameron’s promise of an investigation, Obama isn’t going to be able to just ignore this. The administration will have to respond, although it may do so informally or out of the public eye.
In fact, that’s exactly what we should expect the president to do. Anything else would be a public admission of just how wrong this president’s narrative and agenda have been.
Getting him to admit it in private will be challenging enough.
George Upper is the managing editor of Conservative Tribune. His weekly column, “The Upper Cut,” appears each Tuesday morning. In addition to sharing it on social media, you can also connect with him on Facebook or on Twitter @georgeupper.
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