Facing the Facts in the War on Terror

The terrorist attack that failed on Christmas Day aboard a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit is yet another reminder that no matter how hard the Obama administration tries to make the whole "war on terror" phrase and mindset a thing of the past, such a move continues to be outrageously irresponsible.

Perhaps most telling was Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano's remark yesterday that "the system worked." Let me get this straight: a Nigerian man who is on the terrorist watch list AND whose father tipped off the US about his son's radicalization boards an international flight headed for Detroit with explosives on his body...those explosives somehow don't detonate, thanks to a combination of vigilant passengers and sheer luck...and...the system worked? What's the system then? How did it "work"? Although Napolitano has since tried to backtrack on that statement, it's clear that many members of this administration are unwilling to prosecute the war on terror with the necessary vigilance and vigor. Napolitano is just the latest administration official to make a statement or decision that suggests either naivete or willful ignorance about the ongoing terrorist threat (Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian setting in NYC is obviously one other example. So is the administration's refusal to use the phrase War on Terror. So too is the president's refusal to call the Fort Hood attack what it was: a terrorist attack on US soil by an Islamic extremist.)

Now we learn today that Muslim terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, has informed US authorities that there are many more bad guys in Yemen waiting in the wings to do the same thing he attempted to do. Yemen has become a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists and a haven for Al Qaeda to set up shop...which brings me to my next point. Yemen is also the country where several prisoners at Guantanamo Bay hail from. If the Obama administration goes ahead with its ill-advised plan to close Gitmo, we all better hope he decides against releasing these dangerous Islamic radicals back into Yemen, where they will no doubt pick up right where they left off in aiding Al Qaeda. Or maybe Barack and Co. think closing Gitmo will make these barbarians who have been imprisoned there for years see the light and join America's side against Al Qaeda. If so, the president needs to understand that there's a fine line between his talk about "hope" (as in, let's hope closing Gitmo causes hardened Islamic extremists to defect to our side) and blatant stupidity.

Finally, there's one more broader point that I have seen made by a few commentators that bears repeating here. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a privileged 23 year old who grew up in a wealthy family (his father is a very well-known public figure in Nigeria), went to good schools and received a solid education, and traveled and spent considerable time in Europe. He, like so many other Islamic terrorists, is emphatically NOT a poor, uneducated, underprivileged fellow. Yet this poor, uneducated caricature is the image that many on the Left have clung to over the past eight years. As Michelle Malkin points out (http://michellemalkin.com/2009/12/27/the-myth-of-the-poor-oppressed-jihadist/), our current commander-in-chief had this to say about 9/11 shortly after the attack: The "essence of this tragedy" is that it "derives from a fundamental absence of empathy", which in turn "grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair."

Abdulmutallab, like so many other Muslim terrorists who have planned and carried out attacks around the globe, was not the product of poverty (his family was wealthy and he lived in an upscale apartment), ignorance (he had attended several different schools by age 23), helplessness (he was incredibly well-connected thanks to his father's position in Nigeria), and despair. No, Abdulmutallab was a religious fanatic, a Muslim who became radicalized by evil men who have distorted a religion to promote the wanton murder of innocents.

The poor, uneducated, oppressed image of the jihadist fits in perfectly with Leftist ideology: it lends support to their calls for social justice and economic equality on an international scale, and it allows them to finger America and the imperialist West for at least some of the blame. There's only one problem: it's a narrative of jihadism that is not borne out by the facts.