More than once last week, I heard the analogy “Nero played while Rome burned” to describe the antics of President Obama in the wake of the brutal Islamic terrorist attack in Brussels, Belgium.

Following the attack, despite promptings to return from Cuba to the United States in a presidential display of leadership and support for the Belgium people, Obama chose to stay and attend an exhibition baseball game hours after the attack. The following evening he chose to dance the tango and sip champagne at a state dinner with his wife, Michelle.

Reportedly, at least 31 people were killed and hundreds injured in the attack.

In January 2014, Obama likened ISIS to the “J.V.” team.

“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a J.V. team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama told David Remnick of The New Yorker.

In a February 2015 interview with Vox’s Exra Klein and Matthew Yglesias, Obama charged the media with “absolutely” overstating the threat of “terrorism” compared to the threat of “climate change.”

During the exchange, Obama was asked “if the media sometimes overstates the level of alarm people should have about terrorism” as opposed to the problem of climate change.

“What’s the famous saying about local newscasts, right? If it bleeds, it leads, right?” Obama said. “You show crime stories and you show fires, because that’s what folks watch, and it’s all about ratings.”

Obama said stories relative to climate change just aren’t “sexy” enough for the media.

Nearly a year-and-a-half after the United States and its allies began confronting the Islamic State, Obama still didn’t have a strategy to defeat them. A June 2015 New York Times column written by Julie Davis and Michael Shear reported Obama acknowledging the fact at a news conference following the G7 Summit in Germany.

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“We don’t have, yet, a complete strategy, because it requires commitments on the part of Iraqis as well,” Mr. Obama said. “The details are not worked out.”

In February 2015, FBI Director James Comey warned that his agency was investigating suspected supporters of ISIS “in various stages of radicalizing” in every state across the U.S.

Failed leadership and an anemic response to the threat are enabling the return of the Islamic Caliphate and the rise of ISIS. Innocent people around the world are paying the price with their lives.

We know America is a primary target for radical jihadists. One has to wonder when a coordinated array of ISIS attacks will begin in the U.S.

And what our president is doing to prevent it.

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.