Here is Krauthammer's article:
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 beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism "man-caused disasters." Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9-11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantánamo 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-Qaida 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 as "an isolated extremist." This is the same president who, after the Ford Hood shooting, warned us "against jumping to conclusions" — code for daring to associate Nidal Hasan's mass murder with his Islamist ideology.
Yet, with Abdulmutallab, Obama jumped immediately to the conclusion, against all existing evidence, that the 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-Qaida in Yemen.
Instead, Abdulmutallab is dispatched to some Detroit-area jail and immediately lawyered up. At which point 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.
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-Qaida 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 act of mass murder, he's instantly protected.
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 Dec. 29, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab as "extremist."
A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is a jihadist. And unlike 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 openly pledge 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 to name the enemy, turns laxity into a governing philosophy.
H/T to Orlando Sentinel
13 comments:
I've yet to find Obama's strength, other than deceit. It’s Chicago politics on crack these days.
Obama is weak on terror. Ya think?
Have you noticed how the press is building up Obama's military leadership with his actions towards Haiti?
You forgot to mention, ethics, integrity, business experience, (running the country into the ground doesn't count)the truth, military expertise, common sense, (why else would he try to spend our way out of a recession)and most of all love for country...
Eman,
That's a good analysis.
Just a conservative girl,
Most definitely!
BB,
Yes. Makes me want to puke.
Born Again American,
Your right. He doesn't have any of those good attributes that you mentioned.
I love Charles Krauthammer! He's right, of course. BO is a danger to us all, and a gift to terrorists. Can he really be that naive and stupid? That's the question I have.
These people are frauds, Teresa. Obama is weak on EVERYTHING.
Wow, he is only good lying. Actually, given that we can all see right through him, he's really not all that good at that either!
We can do it, we can do it, we can do it .... last another three years (I hope)!
BO is weak on terror and anything else you can name that matters to our country. On the other hand he excels on deceit, lying, and blaming others for his problems.
Comon, give the guy his due.
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