It Took 3 Full Days.
The first job of government…everything else being secondary…is to provide for the security and protection of the American people.
When George W. Bush was informed about the attacks on the Twin Towers on 9/11/01 he was reading aloud with a second grade class at Emma E. Booker elementary school in Sarasota, Florida…having arrived at 9:04 a.m. and left at 9:12… as part of a program to heighten awareness of education. He was severely criticized later because, having been informed of the attack by Andrew Card, his chief of staff, he looked startled and returned his attention to the kids, saying they read so well they were equal to sixth graders, this before he left after several minutes and took on the active role of commander-in-chief.
Photos taken at the time show he was stunned and that he continued his reading for several minutes…clearly turning over in his mind all the ramifications: were the two attacks terrorist-related or a horrible coincidence? Anyhow the angry Left took advantage of the interim to maintain two contradictory things: (1) he was dumb and unable to react with alacrity; and (2) he was traitorous, well aware of the attacks earlier, having had some insidious connection with them as a plotter of them with the CIA.
The charges were, of course, ridiculous. In all, it was a very short time spent in ruminating about the domestic and international implications of such an attack. Rather than being transfixed and paralyzed with indecision after the attack, he undertook such decisiveness that he has been criticized by the Left ever since. In fact in short order, he launched two attacks on what he deduced were source-spots of al Qaeda, Afghanistan a month later (October, 2001) and Iraq which he concluded had weapons of mass destruction (in March, 2003). He has been sorely criticized by the Left and others for this although, dismissing the inability to find WMD, the nation’s preeminent scholar of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, said that for the first time the forces of Middle East terrorism had been struck back after an attack…Lewis adding that, apart from the weapons-of-mass-destruction issue, the fanatics never succeeded with attacks on America again.
Contrast this with the attitude of the Obama administration concerning the abortive attempt to destroy an airliner on Christmas Day—an attempt that has been acknowledged by al Qaeda as part of its plan.
It took three full days for the president of the United States, Barack Obama, to address this issue with the American people. During that time, his secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano…who had made a point of dropping the word “terrorist,” substituting for it the words “man caused disaster because we want to rid ourselves of the politics of fear,” succeeded in mucking up the situation very well…saying first that the failed attack proved the system is working (despite the fact that the terrorist entered the airliner without difficulty and it took passengers on the plane to subdue him)…and then when the ridiculousness of her statement was evident, had to walk back the statement saying that it is evident the system failed and that it needed tightening.
I should say it does. There have been more terror incidents (12 in number) including foiled plots on U.S. soil in 2009 than in any other year since 2001. The system failed in at least two ways—failing to revoke a visa that the 23-year-old terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (not alleged terrorist as Obama says with lawyerly condescension) that he had obtained in June despite a later warning given to the Nigerian consul from Abdulmutallab’s father that he was a danger to public safety and not adding his name to a no-fly list instead of allowing it to sit on a lesser watch list.
Yesterday from his vacation in Hawaii, three days after the attack, Obama finally addressed it. And even then his statement was highly unsatisfactory. Maddeningly, he described it twice as an “attempted terrorist attack” when in fact it was not attempted but a terrorist attack period. Maddeningly also, in his statement he said Abdulmutallab “allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body, sitting off a fire.” Allegedly. Suppose the attack was successful: would Obama describe it as “an alleged attack that was allegedly successful to the extent that the passengers and crew were all allegedly killed by the alleged terrorist”?
This nicey-nice stuff from a malignly stupid president who is failing in his first mission beyond all others, so concerned about changing our economy into a European system that he ignores his major duty.
The language and the fact that Abdulmutallab was indicted on criminal charges means one thing: the Obama administration reacts as it always had against the Nigerian as a law enforcement issue, meaning that Abdulmutallab will have all the benefits of U. S. law despite the fact that he is not a U. S. citizen, including, presumably, Miranda. That’s the same thing that will happen to the five 9/11 terrorist plotters including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad who will be tried in a civilian court, decided by Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder.
In contrast to this is the record of what happened when a German submarine landed 8 Nazi saboteurs on a Long Island beach on June 17, 1942. They were tried in a military tribunal, found guilty and were executed within three months. The president who ordered this was Franklin D. Roosevelt who understood his first duty well. Unlike this alleged 3rd world refugee who has been educated beyond his intelligence.
If we are lucky, we will survive this madness that envelopes not just Obama but has transformed what was once an acceptable political ideology into a faux secular religion…not a substitute for religion but a religion in its own right…which differs from others in that it is completely uneducable when confronted by truth or any factual basis. It is not just Obama, it is The New York Times, major media, sweet little Katie Couric, and the spawn of Ivy League universities that cling to man is infinitely perfectible by those who will transform the kingdom of heaven to this earth.
Atheists and agnostics all, they see themselves as gods and in that capacity ignore reason. In a very real sense they are like the ancient Church father Tertullian who remained loyal to a concept even though is conflicted with Divine Revelation as well as reason. For that sin of misguided non-profundity, Tertullian was deprived of canonization but his words are identical with the views of American liberals: “credible est, quia ineptum est” (it is believable precisely because it is ridiculous)…and “certum est, quia impossibile” (it is certain because it is impossible).
The credo of liberalism in this juncture can be stated “though he slay me, still will I believe in him”…plodding dumbly to apply Marques of Queensbury Rules to terrorist combatants, believing along with the misguided radicals of the Enlightenment, that sweet beneficence will convert all.
It is clear by now that this nation has had its belly full of Obama and far-Left liberalism. But whether our time will run out before this courtly evader of morbid Leftwing fixity succeeds in destroying this greatest country in the world is the question… the answer I to which I, at age 81, am not sanguine.
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