Obama is Weak on Terror

In the article, Krauthammer is spot on. From the very beginning, the Obama administration has been both callous and naive in their approach to the War on Terror. The Obama administration's use of euphemisms with regards to the War on Terror shows a complete disconnect from the reality of the dangers that terrorism poses to America and Americans. Starting from Obama's decision to close Gitmo, his decision to try KSM in a civilian courtroom in New York City, and the administrations's decision to treat terrorists and enemy combatants as mere common criminals shows that this administration doesn't understand what it takes to fight a war or what it means for America to be at War. This administration's actions have made it crystal clear that they have not a clue as to how to deal with the enemy in wartime and that they have gone back to a pre-9/11 mentality. This administration is giving the terrorists all the advantages, the upper hand, while putting constraints on our CIA, U.S. soldiers, have weakened our security increasing the the threat to American lives just to be "nice" and be "fair" to terrorists who will avail themselves of the use of any tactic to kill innocent lives all in the name of Allah. The Obama administration is living in the normative, a non-existent world, instead of what it is in the present - REALITY - which is the grave threat that terrorists pose to America.


Here is Krauthammer's article:

Janet Napolitano — former Arizona governor, now overmatched secretary of homeland security — will forever be remembered for having said of the attempt to bring down an airliner over Detroit: "The system worked."
The attacker's concerned father had warned U.S. authorities about his son's jihadist tendencies. The would-be bomber paid cash and checked no luggage on a transoceanic flight. He was nonetheless allowed to fly, and would have killed 288 people in the air alone, save for a faulty detonator and quick actions by a few passengers.
Heck of a job, Brownie.
The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration's response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism "man-caused disasters." Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9-11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantánamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York — a trifecta of political correctness and image management.
And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term "war on terror." It's over — that is, if it ever existed. Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately, al-Qaida has not. Which gives new meaning to the term "asymmetric warfare.
And produces linguistic — and logical — oddities that littered Obama's public pronouncements following the Christmas Day attack. In his first statement, Obama referred to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as "an isolated extremist." This is the same president who, after the Ford Hood shooting, warned us "against jumping to conclusions" — code for daring to associate Nidal Hasan's mass murder with his Islamist ideology.
Yet, with Abdulmutallab, Obama jumped immediately to the conclusion, against all existing evidence, that the bomber acted alone.
More jarring still were Obama's references to the terrorist as a "suspect" who "allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device." You can hear the echo of FDR: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — Japanese naval and air force suspects allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor."

Obama reassured the nation that this "suspect" had been charged. Reassurance? The president should be saying: We have captured an enemy combatant — an illegal combatant under the laws of war: no uniform, direct attack on civilians — and now to prevent future attacks, he is being interrogated regarding information he may have about al-Qaida in Yemen.

Instead, Abdulmutallab is dispatched to some Detroit-area jail and immediately lawyered up. At which point he stops talking.

This absurdity renders hollow Obama's declaration that "we will not rest until we find all who were involved." Once we've given Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, we have gratuitously forfeited our right to find out from him precisely who else was involved.

This is all quite mad even in Obama's terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.

The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaida training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator — no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the act of mass murder, he's instantly protected.

The president said that this incident highlights "the nature of those who threaten our homeland." But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Dec. 29, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab as "extremist."

A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is a jihadist. And unlike guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and openly pledge war on America.

Any government can through laxity let someone slip through the cracks. But a government that refuses to admit that we are at war, indeed, refuses to name the enemy, turns laxity into a governing philosophy.

H/T to Orlando Sentinel