CRAZY JOHN – AT 11:14 A.M. ET:  If you have any doubts that American foreign policy is being fun from an insane asylum,  this should eliminate them.  From CNS: 

CNSNews.com) – Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday night rejected any link between Islam and extremism practiced by the likes of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL/Daesh), pointing instead to factors such as poverty among youthful Mideast populations, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – and climate change.

Yeah, people crash planes into buildings because the hometown temperature went up a degree in 50 years.  No doubt that's a cause.

Addressing a reception at the State Department in honor of the recent Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, Kerry told an audience of Muslim community representatives, diplomats and others that the world was facing “a very complex time, and there are many currents that are loose out there that have brought us to this moment.”

“The extremism that we see, the radical exploitation of religion which is translated into violence, has no basis in any of the real religions,” he said. “There’s nothing Islamic about what ISIL/Daesh stands for, or is doing to people.”

The situation was “complicated, and for other reasons,” Kerry said. “We’re living at a point in time where there are just more young people demanding what they see the rest of the world having than at any time in modern history.”

He said with large youthful populations in some countries in the Middle East, South-Central Asia and the Horn of Africa, “you are going to have a governance problem unless your governance is really addressing the demands and needs of that part of the population.”

Kerry said extremist violence was just a symptom of underlying causes that needed to be addressed. He spoke in that context of a need for a partnership – to pursue peace, shared prosperity and the ability to get an education and a job, as well as “sustainability of the planet itself.”

COMMENT:  This is like denying that the Nazi scourge in Europe had nothing to do with Hitler's beliefs and teachings.  Just old grievances, that's all.  Nothing to see, nothing to see.

Some 13 years after 9-11, the leaders of the Obama administration still can't accept that we are fighting an ideology that exists independently of "grievances."  Many terrorist leaders turn out to be educated people from the middle- or even upper classes. 

Oscar Hammerstein II once wrote, in "South Pacific," that "you've got to be taught to hate.."  Now we're being told by John Kerry, undoubtedly echoing his insular and egotistical boss, that it just isn't so.  The teaching doesn't matter.  It's climate, and, of course, the Arab-Israeli conflict.

No wonder we're losing.

October 18, 2014