Opus 2015-16: Should-a-Beens: Obama to Paris?

At first I was glad that the President didn’t go to Paris.  Keep in mind that if anything had happened to him Joe Biden would have taken over.  That was a scary thought.

Let’s face it, losing the chief executive of France or Germany would be a tragedy but it would not cause near the problems that the terrorist murder of the President of the United States would create.  My first reaction was along those lines.  Send Joe Biden.  That is part of his job and he is high enough in government we would save face.  Since this was an invitation to disaster, don’t send the president.

Then I saw that Netanyahu and Abbas were there.  Maybe he should have gone.  If they can survive, so can he.

As the story unfolded I learned that Netanyahu and Abbas were asked not to come.  The French declared that this was not about Israel and Islam.  It was about expressing solidarity with France.  Let me see now, the attacks were against Jews in France.  The attackers were Muslim trained terrorists.  I had hopes that this would wake France up to the danger but I should have realized that if the riots of the last few years did not give them the message why should the murder of a few Jews make a difference to them.

What I thought was simple gets more and more clouded.

If the terrorists had scored a hit with our chief executive in Paris it would mean Joe Biden for president instead of Barak Obama.  Six years ago that would have been a no-brainer, pun intended.  Now I am not sure that it wouldn’t really be an improvement.

homo unius libri