One would think that responding to a terror attack with less moral clarity and forcefulness than that displayed after the Fort Hood attack would have taken some doing. But the Obami have managed to pull it off. Between Janet Napolitano and the president, they’ve managed to convey confusion, denial, and willful indifference to the nature of our enemies. So the trick then for Obama supporters is to make criticism of that dismal performance seem unseemly or “partisan.” The ever-helpful media isn’t wasting time on that front. A case in point is this gasping Politico account:
Republicans have wasted no time in attacking Democrats on intelligence and screening failures leading up to the failed Christmas Day bombing of Flight 253 — a significant departure from the calibrated, less partisan responses that have followed other recent terrorist activity. The strategy — coming as the Republican leadership seeks to exploit Democratic weaknesses heading into the 2010 midterms — is in many ways a natural for a party that views protecting the U.S. homeland as its ideological raison d’etre and electoral franchise.
Well, I suppose we should be thankful that at least one party has as its “ideological raison d’etre” keeping Americans from being slaughtered by Islamic fanatics. The implication is that there is something nefarious about pointing out how badly the administration is responding to serious threats to Americans. Heaven forbid that elected officials should be concerned that the administration is (once again) not getting it when it comes to the war against Islamic fanatics.
But I would think that Democrats must be awfully nervous. They’ve spent years and years trying to live down the reputation as being “weak on defense” and then along comes a president who seems at best a reluctant commander in chief and at worst devoted to returning to a pre-9/11 mentality — which, after all, left us vulnerable on 9/11 in the first place. Nevertheless, it is up to a not-really Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, to sound serious:
“We were very lucky this time, but we may not be so lucky next time, which is why our defenses must be strengthened,” said committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) in a statement. “I view Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a terrorist who evaded our homeland security defenses and who would have killed hundreds of people if the explosives he tried to detonate had worked.”
Where is the Democratic congressional leadership? Largely silent. Perhaps the reason why the criticism of the White House’s bungling seems to be coming almost entirely from one side of the political aisle is that the Democrats are largely mute, hoping (and no doubt praying) that the White House will get its act together. But that might not be wise. Many of them, after all, are going to be on the ballot and they might not want to concede that there is only one political party fully dedicated to preventing the murder of their fellow citizens.
They might start by re-examining and then putting a halt to some of the more egregiously irresponsible actions of the Obama administration, including the decision to proceed with a civilian trial for KSM. Certainly they don’t want to have to explain to the American people that they enabled an administration engaged in a deeply misguided effort to reject the policies that kept us safe for seven and a half years.