Editorial: The Oval Office naif

By Herald StaffYesterday 0:00 AM

When the going gets tough, the tough ... hold a summit, of course.

Around the world Islamic terrorists are attacking journalists, shooting up a kosher market in Paris, a synagogue in Copenhagen, slaughtering Coptic Christian construction workers en masse and burning Kurdish fighters alive, while taking over large swaths of territory for which American soldiers once gave their lives.

And what does this White House do? Well, they hold a three-day "summit" because putting together a bunch of folks in a room in D.C. is just going to make everything so much better.

"We know that military force alone cannot solve this problem," President Obama wrote in an oped in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times. "Nor can we simply take out terrorists who kill innocent civilians. We also have to confront the violent extremists - the propagandists, recruiters and enablers - who may not directly engage in terrorist acts themselves, but who radicalize, recruit and incite others to do so."

His solutions?

"Our focus will be on empowering local communities." That and helping "Muslim entrepreneurs and youths work with the private sector to develop social media tools" to counter "extremist narratives on the Internet."

And if that doesn't work, well, he added yesterday at the close of the summit, "we have to get serious about addressing these economic grievances" and "expanding education."

Really, you can't make this stuff up.

Apparently Obama has forgotten that some of our own jihadis have had a wealth of social programs and educational opportunities thrown at them - like the Tsarnaev brothers or al-Qaeda scientist Aafia Siddiqui, who came here to study microbiology at MIT, got her PhD at Brandeis and is now serving 86 years for trying to kill Americans in Afghanistan. Then there's Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who killed 13 during his rampage at Fort Hood. Oh, that's right, that was just "workplace violence."

Obama is still insisting that this is "ultimately a battle for hearts and minds." How dreadfully - and dangerously - naïve.