The Wall Street Journal editors note that the Obama administration is up to its sickeningly familiar pre-9/11 tactics in handling the Christmas Day terrorist bombing plot:

It immediately indicted Mr. Abdulmutallab on criminal charges of trying to destroy an aircraft, despite reports that he told officials he had ties to al Qaeda and had picked up his PETN explosive in Yemen. The charges mean the Nigerian can only be interrogated like any other defendant in a criminal case, subject to having a lawyer present and his Miranda rights read.

Yet he is precisely the kind of illegal enemy combatant who should be interrogated first with the goal of preventing future attacks and learning more about terror networks rather than gaining a single conviction. We now have to hope he cooperates voluntarily.

And if the administration is following the same criminal justice script, one wonders how the Bush-bashing Left will fare in sticking to theirs. Like Major Nadal Hassan, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab does not follow the Left’s fantasy that terrorists are driven to kill by poverty or lack of education or post-traumatic stress. To the contrary, “Like many of the 9/11 murderers, he came from an affluent family and was highly educated.” He just wanted to kill people, it seems.

We are seeing the same inconvenient facts and remarkably similar pattern of malfeasance by our government. We didn’t catch the warning calls (e.g., Hassan’s bizarre behavior, Abdulmutallab’s father’s warning), one portion of the government didn’t or wouldn’t coordinate with another, the administration proceeds in criminal-justice mode rather than war mode and no one ever seems to be held responsible in the Obama national security apparatus.

Ordinary people, I suspect, are increasingly appalled by all this. And if we are not so lucky next time, the Obama administration’s sloth in conducting the war on terror will result in tragedy and their own political ruin.