Hoekstra: Napolitano, Administration Make ‘Major Blunders’ Against Terrorism
By: Dave Eberhart
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and President Barack Obama seem intent on denying that foreign terrorism is a threat to the United States while taking half-measures that leave our borders undefended, says Michigan Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra.
Newsmax.TV asked the ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence whether Napolitano is the right person to be Homeland Security secretary, in light of her belated admission that her massive bureau failed to prevent a man whose name appeared in a terrorism database to board a U.S.-bound flight from Amsterdam.
“I think that she has done some things which really cause me great concern,” Hoekstra replied. “When I heard that statement that the security system worked, it was total disbelief. It’s not a success when you have a bomb on board a plane that almost detonates. That is failure.
“She made some other major blunders when she said we were not to use the word terrorist anymore — and use the term man-made disaster,” he told Newsmax.TV’s Kathleen Walter. “What in the world does that mean coming from one of our highest ranking government officials?
“And then earlier this year, she also released a report that seemed to imply that veterans, pro-life individuals, and people like that pose a great, if not a greater threat to our homeland security than radicals,” he concluded. “That’s not the kind of leadership that we need when we faced the kind of threat that we face today.”
The lawmaker also made it clear that he did not feel the president’s response to the latest attack is strong enough – reviewing watch lists and screening procedures.
“It does not satisfy me,” he said. “We need the president to take a strong stand, identify this as a threat, and indicate that we are going to do everything that we can to defeat this threat.
“The president has made some very, very serious blunders as far as I am concerned. The decision to move KSM’s [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] trial to New York City, the decision to close Gitmo, where he may end up sending 80 to 90 detainees from Gitmo to Yemen, is just a very, very bad decision.
On Christmas Day, an Islamist fanatic tried to blow up an airplane whose passengers were mostly Christians. And we helped.
Our government gets no thanks for preventing a tragedy. Only the bomber’s ineptitude preserved the lives of nearly 300 innocents.
How did we help Umar Abdulmutallab, a wealthy Muslim university graduate who decided that Allah wanted him to slaughter Christians on their most joyous holiday?
By continuing to lie to ourselves. Although willing — at last — to briefly use the word “terror,” yesterday President Obama still refused to make a connection between the action, the date and Islam.
Was it just a ticketing accident that led to a bombing attempt on Christmas? Was it all about blackout dates and frequent-flyer miles?
It wasn’t. You know it. And I know it. But our government refuses to know it. Despite vast databases crammed with evidence, our leaders — of both parties — still refuse to connect Islamist terrorism with Islam.
Our insistence that “Islam’s a religion of peace” would have been cold comfort to the family members of those passengers had the bomb detonated as planned.
Abdulmutallab’s own father warned our diplomats that his son had been infected by Islamist extremism. Our diplomats did nothing. Why? Because (despite a series of embassy bombings) the State Department dreads linking terrorism to Islam.
President Obama yesterday pulled his head out of the sand long enough to promise a thorough review of US se curity practices after the near-suicide bombing of a commercial airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day.
Then he stuck it right back in.
Obama, in a brief address from Hawaii, did manage to utter the “T” word: “A full investigation has been launched into this attempted act of terrorism.” But he refused to define the nature of the threat.
Nor did he fire Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano — a pity, because if any government official ever earned the boot, it’s her.
Sunday, she claimed “the system” she allegedly oversees “worked” on Christmas Day — even though Nigerian jihadist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab brought a bomb aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 and almost detonated it.
The claim was nonsensical, as she finally noted yesterday — “the system didn’t work” — but not before destroying the credibility she needs to hold the job.
Yet Obama is short on credibility, too. Why can’t he bring himself to describe the threat for what it is: an Islamist holy war against America?
Yesterday, Obama termed Abdulmutallab “an isolated extremist.”
Really? Is that all?
The bomber’s own father warned US officials in October that his son had fallen in with Islamic radicals.
Abdulmutallab himself reportedly told federal officials he trained with al Qaeda in Yemen — and, for what it’s worth, al Qaeda in Yemen confirms that.
And ABC News reported yesterday that two of Abdulmutallab’s Yemeni trainers had been released from Guantanamo Bay to the Saudis in 2007 — and then set free after (no joke) “art therapy rehabilitation.”
Meanwhile, Brian Jenkins of the Rand Corporation reports 12 incidents of Islamist terror either in the United States or involving Americans abroad in 2009, the most in any year since 9/11. (These include the Fort Hood massacre.)
See the trend line?
Obama refuses to.
“Those who would attack our country” is how he described the jihadis — a formulation he used four times in his brief address.
But if the president refuses to define the enemy, how can he expect America to defend against that enemy?
No wonder Napolitano is so confused.
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