PrintDecember 30, 2009
Lethal Nonsense
President Obama finally mounted a modicum of indignation at the foiled Christmas Day attempt to blow up Northwest Flight 253 as it was landing in Detroit, but look at who is the object of his ire.
In his two public statements since the terrorist set himself on fire, the President casts no finger of blame at the Islamist schools which annihilate facts and academic integrity in service of propaganda declaring Islam's supremacy. Nor does the President call out the Muslim nations he has courted with bows and apologies for their continued support of incitement against Christians, Jews and all of the West. Our President makes no mention of fanatical clerics who bless murderous plots as the road to salvation, or he certainly would have had a few words to castigate radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki, the spiritual advisor to both the Northwest terrorist Abdulmutallab and Malik Hasan, whose jihad at Fort Hood murdered 13 dead in November. The President's does not utter the words El Qaeda branch in Yemen, the group who claimed responsibility in an Internet posting. There is not even a moment of outrage against the wealthy, well-educated young man who sewed explosives into his underwear, set them on fire, and hoped to murder 278 innocent people.
The President does not blame these enemies; he does not even name them or assign them a noun. They are not Jihadists, Islamists, or religious fanatics. His only reference to the Islamists who have declared war against the U.S. is, "This was a serious reminder of the dangers that we face and the nature of those who threaten our homeland... We do not yet have all the answers about this latest attempt, but those who would slaughter innocent men, women and children must know that the United States will do more than simply strengthen our defenses," Then he promises, "We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable..." Those? All? Who are these nameless pronoun shadows? How will we know if we have found them if we don't know who they are?
With no clear external enemy, a near disaster in the air, and U.S. passengers inconvenienced by chaotically imposed security measures, someone must be at fault. President Barack Obama names the culprits. "There was a mix of human [U.S. humans] and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security." An angered Obama calls the U.S. shortcomings "totally unacceptable." The President shows no reluctance to place the blame, 100% of it, on the "catastrophic flaws" of the intelligence community.
Of course, the intelligence community could have pieced together the information and, given the constraints of political correctness, perhaps acted to prevent this particular terrorist from boarding a plane for the U.S. The larger problem is the current administration's willful blindness to Islamic terrorism. Immediately after the Christmas Eve incident, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told CNN that there was "no indication that [Abdulmutallab's attack] is part of anything larger," and further declared that "the system worked." (The incompetence of a Homeland Security Secretary who thinks that a faulty detonator and Jasper Schuringa, the brave passenger who subdued the would-be bomber, are indications of a working system is the subject of another article.) The reflexive denial of existence of the Islamic terrorism, followed by internalizing the blame, defies simple logic.
Let's substitute different names for the players in the scenario. Imagine that an Israeli, who has been guided by a rabbi, or an American Christian, who is acting upon his minister's preachings, seeks the destruction of Muslims. To accomplish his violent mission, he boards a plane bound for Saudi Arabia and attempts to blow it up. Would President Obama blame the Saudi intelligence service? What if hundreds of Judeo-Christian terrorists had already executed successful plots murdering innocent Muslims? Would the Saudi King address his nation with no word against the perpetrators of the crimes and criticism only for the failures in the Saudi system? Nonsense of course!
President Obama's failure to place the blame where it belongs in the Northwest incident is not only nonsense, it is lethal nonsense.
