The attempted bombing of NW 253 gives the lie to the Obama Administration’s policy of trying to down play the continuing threat to internal American Security.
The White House’s belated statement from the President’s vacation in Hawaii has had to acknowledge this, reverting to former nomenclature, naming the incident as a terrorist threat. But when not blaming the problem on the former administration, repeating old cliches without meaning.
But it is an about face for the Administration’s effort from its inauguration to minimize the threat, to refuse to use the Bush Administration’s slogan of a war on terrorism It substituted the tongue twisters of the Administration’s principal spokesman on the issue, Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano. These would have been a joke had the issue not reflected a failure of analysis and policy far more serious.
A return to the policy of treating terrorism as primarily a police function has now been dramatically shown to be inadequate in the face of the growing international challenge with its domestic manifestations.
For the security of The Republic, the Administration needs to take a deep breath, review its decisions of the past year, and launch a new and more throughgoing policy of facing a growing domestic threat to peace and security.
That should start with Sec. Napolitano’s resignation as the responsible for the continuing inadequacy of policy.
Whatever further investigation will demonstrate by way of failures of government and airlines security precautions in the Northwest 253 affair, the fact remains that the Obama Administration from its inauguration has tried to minimize the threat.
The recent series of terrorist episiodes inside the U.S. — including the massacre at Ft. Hood — have demonstrated not only that the threat continues to exist but that it may have taken on new and sinister domestic aspects. That includes the discovery of young American Muslims joining jihad forces in Pakistan and Somalia, an American and a permanent resident allegedly playing principal roles in the Mumbai Massacre, and, of course, the refusal to investigate/dismiss a military doctor who had shown every evidence of sympathy with the killers before he, himself, became the most significant terrorist since 9/11.
The President’s campaign rhetoric has seduced his Attorney-General into bringing battlefield prsioners into the civilian courts. That is an affirmation of the old, failed former concept that terrorism was essentially a subject for our civilian justics system, and not an act of war fought with war strategies and tactics. The New York trials will give the jidahists enormous propaganda opportunities, cost enormous amounts for enhanced security, and present a new domestic target for terrorism. [There have been attempted near-successful escapes by terrorist suspects from New York City federal prisons.]
Spending vast new sums to modify a state prison in Illinois in an effort to meet the Guantanomo conundrum is equally ridiculous. Given their fanaticism, it beggars common sense to argue a Stateside prison would be any less of a provocation for the jihadists. Yet, it will infinitely complicate their judicial status and present new problems for local as well as federal officials..
In the political gambit to close Guantanamo, caution has been thrown to the winds. The knotty problem of the Moslem Uighur prisoners has been “solved” by sending some of them to ministates [Bermuda, Palau] where their security would be up for grabs. Worse still, six captured terrorists have been released to Yemen. The failed Yemen regime has a long history of permitting escapes of terrorist suspects, its own threatening internal terrorist threat — now enhanced by ties to Iran as well as Al Qaeda. Indeed, early reports say the Northwest Arlines bomber, while a British-resident Nigerian, was armed in Yemen.
All of this flies in the face of logic.
The President has made extending an open hand to Muslims and Muslim regimes — even those like Iran whose leaders have continued to call the U.S. their enemy — a strategy for achieving peace. So far, that strategy has produced little.
But whatever its aptitude in the coming months, the domestic threat of terrorism from foreign and native killers must receive a higher priority. It must not be confused by a false politically correct attitude which ignores the relevancy of ethnic backgrounds and indoctrination [some of it domestically that needs to be curbed].
The beginning of such a policy is to replace Napolitano who never really had credentials for the job in the first place. The new secretary should be a person of stature — hopefully crossing any political boundary necessary — and with experience and understanding of a growing security problem. If Obama still clings to his campaign rhetoric of bipartisanship, there would be no better candidate for the job than Rudi Giuliani.
Without such a new policy, strategy and tactics, the sacrifices of our young men in Iraq and Afghanistan in the war on terror will go for naught.
The time for action has long since passed…
yeoldecrabb 