President Obama issued a statement at 5:45 pm last night regarding the “Situation in Paris.”

While the timing of this statement comes relatively soon after the reported start of the Paris attacks, Obama took no chances in “speculating” about what happened. Obama does not call the attacks terrorism, let alone mention radical Islam. He simply calls them “attacks.” And “an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.”Apparently, we do not all share the same values, so that is not exactly accurate President Wordsmith.

Through the rest of his seven-paragraph statement, President Milquetoast says such underwhelming phrases like the attacks were “an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians.” He assured everyone that “we stand together with [the French] in the fight against terrorism and extremism.” Later he says Americans are familiar with “these kinds of attacks.” Finally he calls the French “an extraordinary counterterrorism partner” and that he intends to help them in the same way. He sums it up by calling it a “heartbreaking situation.” The worst thing about this statement is the completely unaffected, unemotional tone. It’s as if he’s tired of talking about these kinds of things.

Obama’s short statement after Charlie Hebdo was significantly better than this. Here is how he started the one paragraph statement:

I strongly condemn the horrific shooting at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris that has reportedly killed 12 people. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this terrorist attack and the people of France at this difficult time.

By contrast, Vice-President Biden issued a one-paragraph statement on Paris that surpassed Obama’s mealy mouth by miles. Biden started off by offering condolences to those wounded, and the families of those lost. Obama started his statement by saying he wanted to “offer a few brief comments . . . .” Biden used the word heartbreaking as well, followed closely by it’s “Outrageous.” Simple, it is outrageous. He acknowledged that we don’t know the details, but the United States is ready to support France and the people of Paris. Biden finished out his statement with this, strong language that is actually inspirational:

We will stand together.  We will never bow.  We will never break.  That’s the character of our two nations.  We are bound by timeless democratic values that the cowardice and perverse ideologues of extremist networks can never match, wherever they are. Such savagery can never threaten who we are. We will respond. We will overcome. We will endure.