The US now holds a prisoner of war who has knowledge that could foil
future terrorist operations. The Obama administration has a moral obligation to extract it from Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
The White House seems very big on the idea that fear is our enemy, not our friend.
When sheer luck prevented the destruction of Northwest flight 253, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano instantaneously
insisted there was no larger conspiracy involved - even though the failed bomber himself said otherwise.
And for nearly a year now it has been official US policy, from the Commander-in-Chief
on down, to eschew wartime terminology. Forget "global war on terror" and substitute "overseas contingency
operations." Cut "terrorism," paste in "man-made disasters."
Quelling fears, however, isn't the real purpose behind the altering of the US government's post-9/11 language. This
is:
If the public stops believing the free world is in a protracted
war with Islamofascist mass murderers, then the question of which party's anti-terrorism policy is better loses all meaning.
You can't lose a non-war, any more than you can win one.
If
Abdulmutallab is akin to the DC Sniper or the Son of Sam, then why turn him upside down in search of information? What's the
point in placing another David Berkowitz in a cold jail cell, or depriving a John Allen Muhammad clone of sleep so he'll tell
us what he knows?
Former Vice President Dick Cheney hit it on
the head this week in charging that this administration is playing an inexcusable game of "Let's Pretend." If we
close Guantanamo Bay and send terrorist POWs to some hamlet in Illinois, if we have ACLU-friendly judges try 9/11 conspirators
in liberal New York City, then the American people will realize that the big-government sophisticates can take care of these
problems.
The voters will come to see that this is a job for
super lawyers, not those guys with the fruit salad on their uniforms and the twang in their voices, who commit faux pas like
calling senators "ma'am."
And should anything go wrong,
the politicians in Washington don't get the blame for losing a global war; it's the fault of "the system" -- like
so much of the rest of the failures of big government, from paying farmers not to grow crops to your local DMV's lack of customer
satisfaction.
The ethos of those running this administration
seems to be: Who wants to continue getting bogged down in this messy new kind of war when we have work to do purging ourselves
of the injustice that causes the world to want to wage war against us?
If we would just Europeanize our health care system, apply some real curbs to our capitalist excesses, take the lead
in fighting climate change and let in more immigrants, the ayatollahs would find some other country to be their Great Satan.
Maybe Australia.
No one should be lulled into doubting that
al-Qaida, Iran and Syria, not to mention non-Islamic geopolitical adversaries and economic rivals such as Russia and China,
appreciate the change in focus and smell our new vulnerabilities. And that they are spurred to take advantage.
Is it really a coincidence that this innovative airborne attempt on nearly 300
lives happened when terrorist groups have had nearly a year to see what this administration's foreign policy is all about?
Terrorists watch the US turn its head away from the Iranian people as they repeatedly
revolt against a fanatical regime whose pursuit of nuclear weapons constitutes the gravest threat the world faces today. They
watch us place faith in talk and tepid sanctions as the solution to evil.
If the United States of America won't get tough with a prisoner of war who may hold the key to the saving of hundreds
of innocent American lives, then the message to the free world's bloodthirsty enemies is clear: Now is the time to strike
- hard and repeatedly.
[Based on a Report from Investors.com]
1/10/10
