OBAMA'S DANGEROUS DENIAL *** Jai Maharaj posts
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
By Charles Krauthammer
Jewish World Review
Friday, January 1, 2010
Janet Napolitano -- former Arizona governor, now overmatched
secretary of homeland security -- will forever be remembered for
having said of the attempt to bring down an airliner over Detroit:
"The system worked." The attacker's concerned father had warned U.S.
authorities about his son's jihadist tendencies. The would-be bomber
paid cash and checked no luggage on a transoceanic flight. He was
nonetheless allowed to fly, and would have killed 288 people in the
air alone, save for a faulty detonator and quick actions by a few
passengers.
Heck of a job, Brownie.
The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration's
response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence
but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has
relentlessly tried to play down and deny the nature of the terrorist
threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism "man-caused
disasters." [1] Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of
its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close,
CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik
Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York -- a trifecta of
political correctness and image management.
And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the
term "war on terror." It's over -- that is, if it ever existed.
Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has
not. Which gives new meaning to the term "asymmetric warfare."
And produces linguistic -- and logical -- oddities that littered
Obama's public pronouncements following the Christmas Day attack. In
his first statement, Obama referred to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab [2]
as "an isolated extremist." This is the same president who, after the
Fort Hood, Tex., shooting, warned us "against jumping to conclusions"
[3] -- code for daring to associate the mass murder there with Nidal
Hasan's Islamist ideology. Yet, with Abdulmutallab, Obama jumped
immediately to the conclusion, against all existing evidence, that
the would-be bomber acted alone.
More jarring still were Obama's references to the terrorist as a
"suspect" who "allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device." You
can hear the echo of FDR: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 -- a date
which will live in infamy -- Japanese naval and air force suspects
allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor."
Obama reassured the nation that this "suspect" had been charged.
Reassurance? The president should be saying: We have captured an
enemy combatant -- an illegal combatant under the laws of war: no
uniform, direct attack on civilians -- and now to prevent future
attacks, he is being interrogated regarding information he may have
about al-Qaeda in Yemen.
Instead, Abdulmutallab is dispatched to some Detroit-area jail and
immediately lawyered up. At which point -- surprise! -- he stops
talking.
This absurdity renders hollow Obama's declaration that "we will not
rest until we find all who were involved." Once we've given
Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, we have gratuitously
forfeited our right to find out from him precisely who else was
involved, namely those who trained, instructed, armed and sent him.
This is all quite mad even in Obama's terms. He sends 30,000 troops
to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us
here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.
The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda
training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror
attack, we snuff him out with a Predator -- no judge, no jury, no
qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of
mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution
by drone but even from interrogation.
The president said that this incident highlights "the nature of those
who threaten our homeland." But the president is constantly denying
the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he
referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as
"extremist[s]."
A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who
torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of
these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion
doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains
in London, nightclubs in Bali and airplanes over Detroit (if they
can); and are openly pledged to war on America.
Any government can through laxity let someone slip through the
cracks. But a government that refuses to admit that we are at war,
indeed, refuses even to name the enemy -- jihadist is a word banished
from the Obama lexicon -- turns laxity into a governing philosophy.
[1] http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/testimony/testimony_1232547062602.shtm
[2] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/12/obama-remarks-on-airline-secur.html
[3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/06/AR2009110604351.html
More at:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer010110.php3
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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