When even Vox can see what is going on . . .

Talk about having gotten out of hand.  Nobody's buying the Most Equal Comrade's attempt to craft and impose a narrative:

On the one hand, the US is at war with ISIS, an Islamist extremist group, which has murdered American citizens; it has been fighting al-Qaeda ever since it murdered thousands on September 11. Americans are understandably concerned and want to hear that their commander in chief understands the threat of Islamist extremism and takes it seriously.

On the other, Obama is clearly wary of worsening the wave of Islamophobia that ISIS has inspired in the US. Unduly emphasizing the role of religion could inspire more backlash against Muslims, of whom there are 2.6 million in the US. It could also indulge ISIS's view (also endorsedby some Americans, unfortunately) that the US is at war with Islam. Obama also surely wants to push against dangerous arguments, made by both ISIS and some prominent American voices, that ISIS represents true Islam.

Balancing these goals would be extraordinarily difficult for any president. George W. Bush struggled with it throughout his administration. But Obama is faltering. He has veered so far into downplaying Islamist extremism that he appears at times to refuse to acknowledge its existence at all, or has referred to it as violent extremism. While he has correctly identified economic and political factors that give rise to extremism, he has appeared to downplay or outright deny an awkward but important fact: religion plays an important role as well.

This is backfiring. Obama's conspicuous and often awkward attempts to sidestep the role of religion in Islamist extremism end up only drawing more attention to it. By refusing difficult questions about the role of religion in violent extremism, Obama is ceding those conversations to people like Bill O'Reilly, who has called Islam a "destructive force" and on Tuesday announced the US was in "a holy war."

Or how about the assessment of Andrea Mitchell at NBC News?

“Here he has the summit, no heads of government coming, the participation has not been at a particularly high level. We’ll have foreign ministers, we’ll be speaking to the Egyptian foreign minister shortly, who will be participating,” Mitchell said. “But there hasn’t been a whole lot of support from Europe or the Middle East at a very high level for what the president is setting out here.”

“It seems to be more of a dog and pony show,” Mitchell added.

And if you think Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, the Ayatollah Khameini, the leaders of ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and the Taliban aren't taking note, you need to give it more thought.