'A Question Too Far...'

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That’s how Scott Johnson of Power Line describes how the meeting between John Brennan, President Obama’s counter-terrorism advisor, and the editors of the Washington Times ended, after James Robbins asked Brennan, “Can you give me an example of a jihad in history? Like, has there ever been a jihad…an armed jihad anywhere in history? Has it ever existed for real, or is it just a concept?”

Blogger “Yid With Lid” has the transcript and adds:

Now that he admitted that Jihad can be violent, and pushed to give an example, Brennan decided to pick up his toys and go home. When faced with logic, even the counter-terrorism adviser to the President can’t stick to the administration mantra that there is absolutely no relationship between Islam and the War On Terror Extremists who we’ve pissed off because the West is Just Horrible.  Brennan ran out before he could answer those last questions, so we still don’t know which jihads in history does Brennan think were justified and why? And more to the point, why would he consider any Islamic holy wars legitimate?

The meeting is another example of the thin skin of members of the Obama administration. Brennan didn’t like the paper’s editorial, so he called a meeting to straighten them out. As a member of the Washington Times staff said [to] me about the meeting:

There is a passage I think in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier about never engaging a duel with a social inferior — this video shows why, it can lead to great embarrassment. Sometimes the peasants can surprise the nobles, and of course sometimes the peasants are more than common and the nobles are less than noble.

That comment shows much of the communication issues with the Administration, they believe that their word is Gospel and that the people are too stupid to understand, both contentions are wrong.

Last week, we linked to a clip recorded earlier during Brennan’s testy meeting with the staff of the Times, which is well worth going back to as well.

Whatever their current flaws as a business model, at least somebody at the Times realizes these meetings with the reactionary Obama staffers are video gold. That’s much more than you can say about the the San Francisco Chronicle, for example. Their editors videotaped a meeting with then-Candidate Obama in January of 2008; he handed him the quote of the year, only to see them hide it in plain sight, perhaps as part of their role as his “non-official campaign.”