What is taking the lovely and always vivacious Marie Harf so long to implement her much-anticipated ‘Jobs for ISIS’ program?  The deputy spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State had better get cracking, because time is running out. Unemployed ISIS fighters are training in a camp on the Texas border, and allegedly all over the United States Iran has embedded sleeper cells that are wide awake and ready to pounce. 

Marie might be dallying because she’s unperturbed about the ISIS situation. After all, she was the one who reassured Americans that terrorists are just frustrated job seekers, so to speak, who, for lack of constructive undertakings, have decided to spend their free time beheading children, genitally-mutilating women, and burning men alive. 

Remember, it was also Marie who informed anxious citizens that the way to deal with the violent behavior of terrorists is not to respond in kind, but to provide the “people who join these groups” an opportunity for the type gainful employment that 92 million unemployed Americans who are not terrorists have yet to secure.

It was on MSNBC’s "Hardball" that Marie informed host Chris Matthews that playing hardball with ISIS is not the way to win a war, let alone a war on terrorism. 

Instead, Marie shared this:

We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the longer term – medium to longer term – to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups…[like]…lack of opportunity for jobs.

Since the day America’s blondest bespectacled spokesperson shared that peculiar theory, the nation has waited patiently for the rolling out of the jobs initiative Ms. Harf promised would markedly reduce terrorists’ desire, in the name of Allah, to reign death upon ‘the Great Satan.’

We’re still waiting.

In the interim, a domestic disgrace involving former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez may have thrown a bit of a wrench into the liberal notion that violent behavior is rooted in joblessness and lack of economic opportunity.

Aaron Michael Hernandez was just a kid from Bristol, Connecticut, parented by a doting father who, before suddenly passing away in 2006, instilled in both of his sons the need for a good education, a strong work ethic, and the value of developing athletic ability.

In response to his dad Dennis’s sound tutelage, Aaron attended public schools, became a high school honor student and sports star, played college football for the University of Florida, and was a top player for the Florida Gators squad that went on to win the 2009 national championship.

Then in 2010 All-American Hernandez was drafted by the New England Patriots in the fourth round of the NFL Draft. In 2011, the tight-end signed a deal through 2018 worth a maximum of $40 million, with a $12.5 million signing bonus, and $16 million in guaranteed money.

Aaron Hernandez had accomplished the very things Marie Harf suggested would prevent an individual from becoming violent. Therefore, if Marie’s “jobs for ISIS” conjecture is correct, shouldn’t Mr. Hernandez be the last person on the planet to hurt or terrorize anyone?

After all, Hernandez had an attentive father, was afforded every opportunity, and went on to be paid millions upon millions of dollars to do what he was hired to do -- play football. 

But instead of developing into what Marie Harf claims a person will be when assured a stable future, Hernandez became a kind of domestic terrorist himself. As a result, the former Patriot was indicted in the 2012 double homicide of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for the 2013 murder of 27-year-old landscaper/semi-pro football player Odin Lloyd.

Unlike the victims of the group Marie Harf hopes to rehabilitate with her jobs program, when Lloyd was found in a Massachusetts field his body still had a head. Luckily for Odin, he was not dressed in an orange jumpsuit and locked in a metal cage before being reduced to ash. Instead, Lloyd’s body was riddled with bullets from a Glock .45 belonging to a heartless, terroristic individual who, despite having a well-paying job, lots of money, and a lifetime of opportunity ahead of him, was convicted of first-degree murder.

In other words, judging from Aaron Hernandez’s behavior, the root cause of his violence and subsequent terrorism can neither be blamed on lack of opportunity nor addressed by a well-paying job.

Regrettably for Marie Harf, Aaron Hernandez’s conduct has weakened the State Department spokeswoman’s noble theory that terrorists are terrorists merely because life has handed them a raw deal.  

As for Aaron, he probably would have fared far better if he had killed Odin Lloyd while fighting with ISIS. At least then, the domestic thug would have had Marie Harf making excuses on his behalf. Surely, the State Department spox would have found a way to portray the first-degree murderer as a misunderstood soul wandering aimlessly through a land of wasted opportunities and jobless disappointment. 

But instead, the 25-year-old tattooed gangsta’ wannabe will live out the rest of his life in a prison far less glamorous than the one in which unemployed ISIS fighters will find themselves after being captured here in America -- or as the “nuanced” Marie Harf might see it, ‘recruited for job training.’

Jeannie hosts a blog at www.jeannie-ology.com