Obama: Housing More of a Crisis Than Kidnapped Captain

Let's set the stage here: a captain of a US-flagged merchant vessel allows himself to be kidnapped to save his crew. The Somali pirates take him and are currently holding him. The crew fought off the pirates and maintained control of the ship. The US Navy, FBI and military are on the scene and awaiting orders to take action one would presume.

With all that, Obama can't take a second to even address the issue:

WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama declined to answer reporters' questions on Thursday on a hostage crisis off the coast of Somalia, where a U.S. ship captain is being held captive by pirates.

Obama was asked to comment on the situation several times by reporters at a White House event on refinancing for homeowners. Obama, however, stuck closely to the script and replied that he wanted to remain focused on housing.

Emphasis mine.

I know he wants to "remain focused on housing" but when you're President, you need to multi-task sometimes. Pirates have attacked one of our ships for the first time, they've taken a US citizen hostage and a conflict seems to be imminent. Our new president can't take time to at least say some comforting words to the captain's family? He can't say something to the effect that American will not stand for this provocation and will act accordingly to protect our right to maintain commerce in international waters? What a disgrace.

The President is a mess right about now and the world is watching and snickering. If he's allowing a group of bandits to thumb their noses at America, what must Kim Jung Il and Ahmadinejad be thinking?

I guess he's just following the Bill Clinton playbook whereby Clinton ignored the victims of the first World Trade Center attack (and never visited the site or families of the dead) presumably because the attack sucked the oxygen from his agenda.

Update: I guess we know exactly what Ahmadinejad is thinking.

Update: Ed Morrissey is saying that Obama is being silent because FBI negotiations are ongoing. To be clear, I didn't expect Obama to talk about strategy or tactics, I wanted him to at least acknowledge that he feels for the family of the kidnapped captain.