Roey Rosenblith, one of the passengers of the Christmas-Day-bombing targeted Delta Flight 253, writes a detailed column on his experience. It is worth reading in full, but there are two especially noteworthy points. First, this is what terror is:

I was filled with an intense sense of trepidation, the instinct to run was overwhelming, but there was nowhere to run to in this metal tube filled with almost 300 people. All you could do was look around at your fellow travelers, who were doing just what you were doing: trying not to panic, looking around for some clue in the eyes and faces of other passengers if anyone knew what was happening.

After the flight he learned the details of the plot, that the bomber had real explosives and was associated with al-Qaeda. He tells us that “a harsh and frightening reality suddenly set in as my suspicions were confirmed. I and everyone on that flight had come very close to being nothing but pieces of charred bone and fragments of flesh, identifiable only by DNA testing and dental records.”

When the Obama administration flacks tell us this was only an “attempt” or that it was “foiled,” they should tell that to the passengers on that flight and to their loved ones. The Obama team is now seemingly in the business of defining terrorism downward. We are supposed to celebrate and think that the “system worked” because 300 poor souls were traumatized rather than incinerated on Christmas Day.

Rosenblith also observes:

Most people seemed to be in denial of what I saw was evident. This guy wanted to kill all of us, he had wanted to blow up the plane. When I said this, they would just shake their heads; even those that had seen it happen didn’t want to believe it.

He is right, of course. The desire to not believe there are jihadist fanatics determined to kill us — organized in multiple international venues, not amenable to reason or persuasion, and only stoppable if captured or killed — is so intense that it still ensnares elite sophisticates and those who are charged with keeping us safe. Perhaps the president would do well to get off the golf course and explain that he finally gets it and plans to begin a top-to-bottom review of his approach to domestic terror attacks (not merely our “aviation protocols”). Unless, of course, he still doesn’t get it and intends to keep on doing exactly what we’ve been doing — avoiding labeling the nature of our enemy and treating these incidents as discrete, criminal acts.

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