The Underwear Bomber and Obama’s Anti-Terror Policy

The last few weeks have been intense in the grounds of national security. The Christmas Day underwear bomber, a 23-year-old Nigerian willing to give up his own life in a Jihadist act through his clumsy terror attempt in an airliner, provoked a series of collateral implications; from extreme pressure to implement contingency security plans in the United States and worldwide airports, to presidential and U.S. top security officials’ contradictory declarations.

Thanks either to divine intervention or by his mere ineptitude, the hidden bomb in Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s shorts did not go off, and there were no casualties in the frustrated attack. Despite the plot failure, the victory for Al Qaeda resides in having the ability to throw the world into chaos by the multiplied effects of a frail plot. Disturbingly, is in such ability where the terror organization’s power resides.

On January 7^th, the White House released a declassified review of the incident on which was stated that a “failure to connect the dots” and “human errors and a series of systematic breakdowns failed to stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before he was able to detonate an explosive device onboard flight 253.”

The question is how the White House dares to point fingers to any intelligence officials if political correctness is being dictated from the very top? Let’s just rewind the sequence of terror-related events during the last six months.

On June 1, 2009, a Muslim terrorist killed one soldier and wounded another on a military recruiting center in Arkansas. There was no big buzz, the press reported the hard news and after that, pretty much forgot about it. Then, during the first week of November, we had the Fort Hood massacre. Obama never called it an act of terror. Now, we had the underwear bomber on Christmas Day, whom initially was called “an isolated extremist” by the president. It seems the president has not yet realized we are at war, also in the homeland.

The fact that the three previously mentioned terror plots have happened in American soil, does not mean their masterminds have different motivations than the ones of terrorists propagating Jihadist ideology in Afghanistan.  President Obama needs to understand once for all, that Al Qaida wants to kill us, that they are the bad guys, and not us.

While the U.S. Armed Forces use drones to successfully execute terrorists, the whole deal falls apart when they are captured, as Obama’s policy is to Mirandize and offer all the legal rights of an American citizen, to foreign Jihadists. That is exactly what happened once again, with Abdulmutallab who has now lawyered up and sealed his lips.

Obama’s new anti-terror policy is equivalent to tell Al Qaeda: hey guys, don’t stay in Afghanistan, come to the U.S. and kill us here, blow us up here and you’ll be granted legal and human rights.

There is no question that captured Al Qaeda members should be subject to interrogation and placed in military, not civilian prisons; but the Obama administration has dismantled and reversed so many U.S. anti-terror programs that the perception is that they care more about the rights of terrorists than protecting the American people.

Al Qaeda is testing the Obama administration from many fronts and eager to use any resources. We can see it by just analyzing their willingness to utilize a confused, on the verge of depression, 23-year-old kid, in an operation far from the sophistication of the 9/11 attack.

The denial of the administration over the gravity of the problem it’s a problem in itself. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano first stated that the system “worked,” only to come back 24 hours later and admit it did not. Briefing reporters about the release of the incident’s review, the President’s top counter terrorism advisor, John Brennan said he was “shocked” to learn “the fact that they [Al Qaeda] had moved forward to try to execute this attack against the homeland […] we didn’t know they had progressed to the point of actually launching individuals here.”  Napolitano agreed in this perception. Shocked? Are you serious?

As per the accountability for this third terror plot in U.S. soil in six months, no heads have rolled. During the briefing Brennan added “I told the President today, I let him down […] I told him I will do better and we will do better as a team.”  Brennan was given 30 days to report on the progress of intelligence corrective actions, but -considering that on his second day in office, Obama issued executive orders banning torture and closing the secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency, within others- the possibilities of such progress will mainly depend on a renewed, and a much more aggressive approach from Obama himself, to the war on terror.

Obama waited three days after the attack to address the underwear bomber failed attack, but when he did, he referred to it as talking about a police report involving a suspect, an alleged attack, an isolated extremist. It took the president a subsequent public appearance to use the term “we are at war,” emotionless. People perceive the detachment and that’s why are worried.