How is it that the Bush/Chaney administration carried this country through seven years terrorist-attack free while the Obama/Biden duo has had three serious events in its first eleven months? Personally, I don't believe that our operational intelligence apparatus has appreciably changed. However, what has changed is the signals that this administration is sending to Al-Qaeda, viz: the planned closing of Gitmo, no more waterboarding, turning terrorist acts into criminal offenses, renaming the "war on terrorism" into "overseas contingency operations", the non-existence of our "High Value Detainee Interrogation Group" (HIG) ten months after Obama announced its creation, making a Girl Scout leader the head of Homeland Security, closing down military tribunals, moving the KSM trial to New York City, the president's slow, low-key responses to each terrorist act, sending Chinese Islamic terrorists to Bermuda, refocusing our government on global-warming/health-care/fire-hose domestic spending, and finally blaming everything that goes wrong on Bush.One other point that needs to be reiterated: during the Bush years the war in Iraq was a magnet that drew disenchanted Muslims from around the globe to sacrifice themselves there in the name of Allah. Now, that Iraq is being deemphasized, many more venues have become attractive to would-be martyrs ... including unfortunately the U.S.A. This last reason clearly is not of Obama's doing alone, but our haste to leave Iraq may turn out to be a gigantic mistake ... witness the dramatic increase in terrorists bombings there recently.
So, it may be that style is just as important as substance in combating the terrorist threat we suffer. And, if Obama does not do a convincing 180-degree turn in his rhetoric, we may be in for three more years of "isolated incidents".
Hmm. Does the name Richard Reid sound familiar? Or is attempted shoe bombing exempt from your watch list. Dick Cheney always suggested that even more attacks had been foiled during his watch, similar to the foiling of threats during Obama's first year.
ReplyDeleteLet's hope that the monotonous drumbeat of O-negativism does not release anthrax spores.
I said seven years safe. Richard Reid's attempted bombing was outside of that window. I would like to think we have learned a few things since then ... maybe not.
ReplyDeleteSo it's ok if you make a convenient 'window'. Sounds a bit like wheedling to me.
ReplyDeleteOK, let's try another non-weedling tack. Bush/Chaney were wrong in remanding Reid to civilian court. Does this make Obama's foolishness now right? (Still trying to forget that you voted for him, eh, Captain?)
ReplyDelete(CNN) -- The father of a man suspected in a botched terror attack aboard a Northwest Airlines flight contacted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria recently with concerns his son was planning something, a senior U.S. administration official said Saturday.
ReplyDeleteThe father -- identified by a family source as Umaru Abdul Mutallab -- contacted the U.S. Embassy "a few weeks ago" saying his son, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had "become radicalized," the senior administration official, who is familiar with the case, told CNN
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Are there dots to connect? It's just one big effin' dot.