When people are scared, there are usually both rational and emotional factors involved. The only way to mitigate these fears is to address them head-on and reassure the folks that the causes of their fears are being addressed in the most responsible ways available. Generally, that approach encourages the triumph of reason over emotion and allows most people to react in a rational manner. No response is likely to cause the most hysterical people to stop being hysterical. But honest, open, and confident messages of hope and encouragement will calm the fears of the opinion-makers around the country.
What does NOT work is hiding the truth, pretending that the threat doesn’t exist, changing the subject, and refusing to provide rational advice. In other words, Mr. President, your performances on the topic of international terrorism when you were 10,000 miles away from home were exactly the WRONG ways to approach the near panic caused among many Americans when the latest Paris and Mali disasters were reported.
The enemies of this nation are NOT the Republicans, the threat of terrorist infiltration into the United States through the Middle Eastern refugees is NOT stupid or partisan, nor is ANYONE afraid of widows and orphans. Most Americans who are at all aware of the terrorist threats to the homeland have been that hoping that you will wake up and smell the coffee now that you are finally home.
There is no lack of cogent and available steps being publically proposed by many of your own people. Former Secretaries of Defense, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, are recommending a strategy which is beginning to sound like consensus. This is 1) invoke Chapter Five of the NATO Charter to unite the NATO countries behind the efforts to destroy the Islamic State, 2) persuade and support the Sunni allies of the US, especially the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, as well as the Kurds to provide ground forces with direct participation of US Special Forces, 3) massively increase air strikes on Islamic State targets, especially their oil fields and, most of all, 4) recognize and proclaim that we are at war with these killers. Even your current Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, has suggested some of these actions.
The problem is, Mr. President, that few people expect you to take this advice. Most people believe that you will continue to try to divide the country by mounting partisan attacks, advocating racial violence, seeking to re-populate various areas of the country by wholesale immigration, and ignoring the seriousness of the war on terrorists. This platform is unpopular enough in a time of relative peace. If you keep it up in the face of an enemy who seeks to defeat our national will to fight them by beheading our journalists and drowning enemy soldiers in cages, you will go down in history as the worst president since Jimmy Carter, perhaps the worst in American history.
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