A more horrifying point is that the president confirmed the widespread perception that he is pulling punches in the fight against Islamic State. “Obama doesn’t think this is an existential battle that’s worth the cost to the United States of an all-out war,” columnist David Ignatius said in The Washington Post. A similar conclusion appeared in a New York Times article about the meeting.

Both say Obama will not change course even if America suffers what he regards as minor terror attacks, presumably like the one in San Bernardino that killed 14 people and wounded 22. Ignatius described this as Obama’s “cost-benefit analysis” and wrote that the only thing that would lead the president to alter his strategy “would be a big, orchestrated terrorist incident that so frightened the public that it began to prevent the normal functioning of America.”

Think about the implications of that approach. Despite Obama’s efforts to reassure the country that he is serious about fighting the bloodthirsty jihadists, in truth he is not. He is merely committed to maintaining the status quo.