You know, if it wasn’t so serious, it would be comical. The person in the Obama Administration who is most responsible for keeping America safe, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, says that “the system worked.” Unbelievable.
A Nigerian Muslim named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, whose father is so alarmed that he is a dangerous radical terrorist that he, of his own volition, goes to the American Embassy in Nigeria, and warns U.S. State Department officials of his concerns, is allowed to keep his visa, board an American airliner with explosives sewn into his underwear, and nearly blows up the plane, and is only stopped by a civilian Dutch passenger (there were no U.S. air marshals on the plane), and the system worked? You’ve got to be kidding.
And let’s not forget that this is the same Secretary of Homeland Security who opined that the greatest threat to our nation’s safety was our own U.S. soldiers coming home to the United States and joining pro-life or right-wing militia groups and doing harm to us. I’m not making this up.
President Obama, who was beaching in Hawaii, finally after 72 hours of silence, faced the cameras and called the near miss an unfortunate example of “an isolated extremist.” Yeah, just like the Fort Hood Muslim radical gunning down 13 soldiers while yelling “Allahu Akbar” was an isolated extremist. (It turns out that both the Fort Hood shooter and the underwear bomber were in touch with the same radical, Yemeni, hate-spewing imam. Coincidence? Hardly.)
Political correctness is alive and well, and running amuck in this feckless Administration. And again, it would be almost comical if it wasn’t so serious, and putting all of us at risk. Terrorist actions aren’t terrorism anymore – they’re “man-caused disasters.” Secretary Napolitano said she didn’t want to refer to the “war on terrorism” anymore because she felt it reflected too much the “politics of fear.” Well, even though Napolitano may have called off the war, the terrorists sure haven’t. They are still bound and determined to kill as many innocents, especially Americans, as possible.
And consistent with the Obama Administration’s determination to refuse to acknowledge that we’re at war, they’re determined to close Guantanamo Bay and try the worst of the worst, Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed, the diabolical mastermind behind September 11th, in a civilian court on American soil, in New York City. So now we have to extend to the terrorists (oops, participants in man-caused disasters) all the rights of American citizens – Miranda rights, free lawyers, subpoena power, rights against self-incrimination, free HBO high-def cable TV, etc., all paid for by you, the American taxpayer.
So now when we catch a terrorist like Abdulmutallab, rather than sweat them out and try to get as much information as possible to avoid future acts of terrorism, they can lawyer-up (at our expense). And as far as closing down Guantanamo Bay, it turns out that two of the plotters who assisted the underwear bomber had been released from Guantanamo Bay and sent back to Saudi Arabia where their rehabilitation was to be accomplished through something called “art therapy.” I’m not making this up either (except for the HBO high-def cable TV, as they usually don’t get high-def).
Let’s recap. You have a young, male, Jihadist Muslim, whom the CIA has been tracking for months, who is consorting with a known terrorist-supporting imam, whose father has reported to an American Embassy that his son may well be a terrorist, who has no passport, who is on the British no-fly list, who pays for a one-way ticket with cash, and has no luggage, is allowed to board an American aircraft with nearly 300 other passengers, with explosives sewn into his underwear. And the system worked. Secretary Napolitano is so clueless that she should be fired from her position immediately (a position that she had no qualifications to fill in the first place).
This Administration and this Congress better begin to realize that whether we like it or not, there is a radical ideology that is at war with us, whether we consider ourselves to be at war with them or not. Reading them Miranda rights, and helping them to get in touch with their inner child (or even giving them art therapy) isn’t going to win them over. Replacing the word “terrorism” with “man-caused disasters” will not make us any safer. And trying to convince the public that all these “man-caused disasters” are perpetrated by isolated individuals with no common thread, is delusional – and dangerous.
It’s time for change – that we can believe in.