Instead of assuring the American people it is doing everything it can to eliminate the threat of the Islamic State in the United States, the White House has been doing its best this week to play down any connection of the shooting in Garland, Texas, last Sunday with the Middle East terrorist group that has claimed responsibility for it.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest went so far as to say the shooting was “what appears to be an attempted terrorist attack.”
But since the gunmen actually opened fire, and were killed after doing so, there was nothing attempted about it. And since it occurred outside a building hosting a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest and was perpetrated by men already being watched by the government, there is little doubt it was a terrorist attack.
Of course, this is nothing new for the White House, which has eschewed stringing together any combination of the words “radical” “Islamic” and “terrorism” when such attacks have fit at least some combination of the three words.
Earnest was right to say there was uncertainty about whether the attack was directly related to the Islamic State, but belittling the scope of the event doesn’t make people feel safer and doesn’t speak to the probability there are Islamic State sympathizers around the country willing to carry out similar attacks.