Islamic Terrorist “Allegedly” Setting Bombs? Japanese “Allegedly” Bomb Pearl Harbor?

2010 JANUARY 8

Leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including Said al-Shihri second from the left.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Muslim Nigerian “charged” with the failed attempt on the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight now has a public defender. So we will be hearing a lot about “allegedly this and that” for the next few years. He will be tried in criminal court instead of a military tribunal despite the fact that “he was trained, equipped and directed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” according to Senator Lieberman.

The Left has always been consumed more by domestic politics over military affairs, at least since the Vietnam War. Victor Davis Hanson of National Review Online notes that one-third of all terrorist plots since 2001 occurred last year, 2009. This has happened even as the Obama administration has nominally kept most of the Bush-Cheney policies in place, including those most loudly objected to by the left; the Patriot Act, renditions, military tribunals, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But there is a difference between a nominal policy and the degree to which one’s will is committed to them.

It is obvious that the president and his administration do not feel comfortable supporting an unapologetic militarily strong America. It is quite the opposite. It took 4 months to make a decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, when it was self evident this had to and would be done. Obama’s foreign policy speeches in 2009 have empathized with the criticisms of America’s stated enemies. Not only has this been irritating to Americans, but laughable to our enemies. The actions of Iran’s neo-fascist Muslim state toward Obama’s overtures demonstrate the ineffectiveness of this approach.

The reaction by the administration to the near disaster on Christmas day is a perfect demonstration of this weak sensibility. Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano’s “the system worked” claim was Dali-esque. It is impossible to tell what she really thought as her statement was so transparently stupid. It is her lazy thought process, however, that is most terrifying. Some vague bureaucratic apparatus apparently operated smoothly, so she was pleased to inform us how safe we all are. Meanwhile, the Nigerian guy’s father has been warning the world about his son for years and he is on every watch list ever made. It would have been nice if she showed a similar outrage that every American was feeling instead of this placid response. But she is not outraged. Some process worked, so all is okay. This is the same woman who coined the term “man-made disasters” for just such events as this attempted bombing.

I have never been comfortable with even the concept of the Department of Homeland Security. The name is a bit too 1930’s German for my taste. More substantively, it simply added layers of management to an already heavily bureaucratic system Department of Homeland Security Reorganization Plan November 25, 2002. National security improves when those in charge have a passion for it to improve, not by rearranging reporting lines that can be as effectively ignored as the previous reporting lines. It is almost hard to believe what we as a nation put up with at airports. 19 radical Muslims from Saudi Arabia fly planes into buildings and we now all are subject to time consuming, rote, and ineffective scrutiny. Muslim Richard Reid plants a bomb in his shoe, so now we all have to walk barefoot through security lines. The Nigerian Muslim Christmas bomber uses a blanket in the last hour of a flight, so now all international fliers need to put books away in the last hour of flight. But not the first hour, or the third hour. It is a parody of common sense. What happens when the next Muslim bomber copies the techniques of “drug mules”, by inserting his explosive device in some bodily “cavity”?

What really gets Obama and his administration passionate is not terrorism, but the opportunity to control people’s lives. Real passion is expressed at the thought of restricting energy usage, based on fake science; and controlling how Americans consume health care, based on fake economics. But the occasional missed Muslim terrorist, like Fort Hood’s Hasan or Nigeria/England’s Abdullmutalab can hardly muster a coherent response. Instead we are instructed to not jump to conclusions over these “alleged” man-made causers of disaster. After all, the system works.