While President Obama was calmly suggesting on Wednesday that jobs are the answer for the terrorists who would decapitate and burn alive hostages in the name of the Prophet, the Islamic State was adding the North African country of Libya to the countries it is seeking to conquer.
Only 400 miles from the southern shore of Italy, the Islamic State group had secured control of two Libyan cities on the Mediterranean coast, was infiltrating the country's two largest cities and was on the move toward its oil facilities. Only days ago, it slaughtered 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians there.
Back in Washington, D.C., Obama told the "Countering Violent Extremism" summit that the economic grievances terrorists exploit have to be addressed, that Muslim-Americans have legitimate concerns about law enforcement and shouldn't be profiled because of their faith, and that "hatred and bigotry and prejudice have no place in our country."
Meanwhile, in an upset, Italy and France said they favor international action against the Islamic State in Libya, and Egypt -- perhaps thinking it is the next target -- is suggesting a United Nations-backed coalition air campaign.
Obama, sensing the mounting crisis, did break his silence on using the words "Islam" and "terrorists" in the same paragraph.
And to the audience made up of mostly Muslim-related groups, he soothingly reiterated that "religious leaders and scholars preach that Islam calls for peace and justice, and tolerance toward others," that "no religion is responsible for terrorism" and that "people are responsible for violence and terrorism."
An article in The Atlantic this week has been all the rage across social media for attempting to expose the foundational thinking behind the Islamic State. Indeed, it goes on at length in attempting to do so. And an opposing article in ThinkProgress, a left-leaning online magazine, attempts to explain "what The Atlantic gets dangerously wrong."
What both articles say without saying it is the same thing critics have said for centuries about Christianity -- that adherents and devotees can and will use a faith as a whole, or in parts, to make whatever faith-based point they want to make and justify whatever faith-based action they want to take.
As such, Islamic terrorists can interpret every word in their holy book literally or read it with a measure of 21st-century understanding and come to the same conclusion of violence as a necessity. They can claim their religion is one of peace but defend their murderous actions. They can claim they have the backing of God but seek to wipe out others who have the same God.
Today, we don't have to understand the Quran, apocalyptic theology or Islamic jurisprudence to know that beheading innocent people, raping women at leisure and seizing the land of a sovereign country are bad.
Obama, in his widely panned National Prayer Breakfast talk several weeks ago, labored to equate extremism perpetrated by Muslims today with that perpetrated by Christians in the Crusades 800 years ago.
But Americans didn't need to know the whys and wherefores of the Shinto religion of the Japanese after that country's army attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the British didn't need to analyze whether Adolf Hitler's Christian faith had any relation to theirs when they were under a German blitzkrieg in 1940 and 1941.
Indeed, rank-and-file Muslims in America don't feel any more attached to the violent tactics used by the Islamic State in the Middle East in 2015 than do rank-and-file Christians in America to the Crusades in the Holy Land in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries.
Going forward, the world doesn't need any more talk from Obama about what Islam is or isn't, about how Islamic terrorism may compare to past Christian atrocities or about getting our own house in order.
What a real leader would do -- and there's still time to do it -- is not to organize a summit but to help organize a United Nations coalition against this murderous, territory-gobbling, caliphate-proclaiming, consequence-avoiding extremist group. (Remember President George H.W. Bush and the coalition against Iraq in the Gulf War?) Make the phone calls. Promise even more U.S. weaponry and air power. Do the hard work.
If the United States is still the world's leading superpower, a claim the president has seemed hesitant to want to make, he owes it to the world to use his position and influence to help rid it of this scourge.