http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ivan-eland/boko-haram-hillary-clinton-hysteria_b_5309710.html

Ivan Eland Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty, The Independent Institute

Public Hysteria Over Boko Haram May Be Counterproductive

Posted: 05/12/2014

Although the Nigerian radical Islamist group Boko Haram has long made even the al Qaeda groups look moderate -- slaughtering entire villages and shooting or burning to death 59 school boys -- it apparently took the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls to get the world's attention, including that of America and Britain. And then we learned that during the first term of the Obama administration, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declined to even label the group as a "terrorist" organization. Her successor John Kerry's reversal of this stance last year and the current high public profile of the president and first lady expressing public horror over the group's actions are long overdue, right? Not so fast; public posturing isn't usually that productive when dealing with groups ruthless enough to take such terrorist actions (that is, wantonly massacring or kidnapping innocent civilians).