On Friday morning, Barack Obama peddled his failed Middle East foreign policy of appeasement in an interview with ABC. When asked about the strength of the Islamic State Obama responded, “I don’t think they’re gaining strength. What is true is that from the start, our goal has been first to contain and we have contained them.”

Friday evening in Paris, surrogates of what Obama previously characterized as the “JV Team,” undertook a well coordinated attack and slaughtered more than 129 civilians to the cry of “allah akbar.”

Obama responded to the attack saying, “I don’t want to speculate at this point in terms of who was responsible for this.” He continued, “Once again we’ve seen an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians.” No, actually this was not an “attempt.” They most certainly succeeded.

Obama declared, “We stand together with the French in the fight against terrorism and extremism.” Blinded by his admiration for Islam, Obama just can’t bring himself to say “Islamic terrorism” or “Muslim extremism.”

Of course his assertion that “we stand together with the French” is true, in the tragic sense that France’s Socialist President Francois Hollande has followed Obama’s model of appeasing Islamic Jihad. And for the second time this year, the French are paying a heavy price for such appeasement.

Obama and Hillary Clinton are a case study in foreign policy failure. They have squandered all the blood and treasure we expended in Iraq, resulting in a Middle East meltdown. Their policy legacy is framed by holocaust and humanitarian crisis, and a wave of unprecedented terror that is emigrating to Europe and the U.S.

Recall if you will the prophetic warning issued by George W. Bush in July 2007: “To begin withdrawing from Iraq … will be dangerous, for Iraq, for the region and for the United States. It will mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al-Qa'ida. It means that we would be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It will mean we would allow terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they had in Afghanistan. It will mean that American troops will have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous.”

President Bush took the battle to the enemy in order to keep the front on their turf, not ours. Obama has retreated, opening the door for Islamists to move the front to our homeland.

In my analysis last year on the threat to our homeland, “Islamic Jihad — Target USA, I noted, "The most likely near-term form of attack against civilians on our turf, will be modeled after the conventional Islamist assaults in the Middle East, bombings and shootings, as we have now seen in Paris, London, Berlin, Sydney, Toronto, Boston, New York and Washington. This type of attack is low tech but effective in terms of instilling public fear with the long-term goal of civil acquiescence.”

Indeed, on the eve of the Paris attack, the “chatter” on Islamic websites was, “American blood is best, and we will taste it soon.”

Jihad has been around for 1,400 years, and having just celebrated the 1775 founding of the Marine Corps, I note that one of the Marines earliest deployments after we became a nation was under Thomas Jefferson against the Islamist Barbary Pirates in 1801. Islamic Jihadists have been terrorizing the world for a long time and in the last three decades, they have emerged again with much deadlier consequences, most notably the 9/11 attack on our homeland — the masterminds of which came into the U.S. on Bill Clinton’s watch.

On Obama’s watch, there have already been numerous smaller attacks, among the more bloody Islamist assaults at Ft. Hood in Texas and here in Chattanooga. This is the result of appeasement — and the consequences are coming to a theater near YOU!

This year, the Islamic State has posted numerous online “kill lists” of U.S. military personnel with their names, addresses and photos. Perhaps we should reconsider Obama’s plan to seed 10,000 Syrian Muslims in communities across our nation, now that at least one of the terrorists entered France masquerading as a refugee. Of course, the first wave of “refugees” has already arrived, many of whom fit neatly into the Islamic terrorist profile. (Perhaps they should only be sent to “sanctuary cities.”)

And in a final gesture of appeasement, last week Obama approved the release of five more Islamist detainees from Gitmo. The Yemeni radicals arrived in their Middle East host country just hours after the Paris attack.

Power does not tolerate a vacuum and Republicans better get it right.

Footnote: It’s no small Irony that Obama claims the greatest national security threat is now what is ubiquitously refereed to as “climate change,” given that foreign leaders are scheduled to meet in Paris for a global warming summit this week. Al Gore was on hand with his now-canceled webcast, “24 hours of Reality and Live Earth.” There was enough reality in Paris Friday night. On Friday night one of our editors asked, “I wonder how long it will be before Clinton or Sanders blames the attack in Paris on ‘climate change’”? Answer, it only took 24 hours. Moderator John Dickerson asked Bernie Sanders a straightforward question: “In the previous debate you said the greatest threat to national security was climate change. Do you still believe that?” Sanders replied, “Absolutely in fact climate change is directly related to the growth in terrorism.”