President Barack Obama again demonstrated his lack of leadership instincts when he failed to join other world leaders who marched side by side through Paris on Sunday at a mammoth unity rally after last week's terrorist violence, former Rep. Allen West told
Newsmax TV on Monday.
"If the president found time to go to Nelson Mandela's funeral, if he found time to send three White House officials to the funeral of Michael Brown out in St. Louis, he should've been there locking arms with the
leaders" who gathered in force in France, West said on "The Steve Malzberg Show."
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West joined a growing chorus criticizing the administration's absence from the rally, which the White House finally conceded was a
mistake after attempts to explain it away.
"When you wear the title of the leader of the free world, that means you don't use Air Force One to fly down to Knoxville, Tennessee, to talk about free community college education," said the retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and Iraq War veteran. "That means you show leadership.
"Unfortunately, this was an abdication of it," he said, "and it would've been better if Secretary of State John Kerry had just said, 'We blew this one,' instead of coming up with this excuse and saying that people were 'quibbling' over it."
West, president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis, said Obama's absence further emboldens the West's terrorist enemies — some of whom, he noted, hacked into and defaced the U.S. Central Command Twitter feed on Monday, forcing the military to shut it down.
He said the president and other Western leaders are still having trouble coming out and saying that the West is at war with radical Islam on all fronts, including online.
"Unfortunately, it seems the only person that understands this ideology and that we have to fight against this ideology is the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi," said West.
He contrasted Sisi — who criticized violent Islamism before a roomful of Muslim scholars — with Obama, who, when he visited and spoke in Cairo, "invited the Muslim Brotherhood to be in the front two rows."
Pointing also to Attorney General
Eric Holder's refusal to say there is a war under way with radical Islam, West said, "They continue to wish away the problem."
"[Fort Hood shooter] Nidal Hasan has been convicted and sentenced, and they still classify it as 'workplace violence,' " said West.
West also said the coming global terrorism summit in February, far from being a response to the wave of violence that struck Paris last week, is just a previously scheduled event that is being repurposed to make it look relevant.
He argued that defining who and what the enemy is in the fight against global jihadism is likely to become a major issue in the 2016 presidential campaign — but the question of whose advantage the issue plays to among potential candidates is "wide open," he said.
The author of the memoir
"Guardian of the Republic" also discussed would-be 2016 presidential contenders, including two-time candidate and 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney.
"I remember the foreign policy debate when he said that Russia was a geopolitical threat. . . . So, he looked like he was spot-on," said West. "But I just don't know what the reaction will be from, of course, number one, the donor base and number two, the grassroots movement."
West said that between now and May, expect to see a lot of "positioning and posturing" by hopefuls.
"It's like the first quarter of a football game; you can't determine the outcome yet," he said of the campaign playing out over the next 22 months.
He said that Republicans in Congress, with their majorities in both chambers now, must spend the next two years demonstrating to Americans "who Barack Obama is."
"They have to show that he is the intransigent ideologue," said West. "They have to show that he's the obstructionist because he no longer has [former Democratic Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid to block . . . almost 367 pieces of legislation. So, he never had to use his veto pen because Harry Reid was his veto pen.
"Now we have to put the president in a position to [answer] whose side are you on? Are you on the side of liberty and freedom or the Islamic terrorists? Are you on the side of the American people and true economic recovery, or do you just want to continue to run around the country talking about free community college tuition?" said West.