Another Obama National Security Failure?
 
May 7, 2010
From the Desk of Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton:

Last Saturday, Faisal Shahzad drove a bomb-laden SUV into Times Square with the intent to murder as many Americans as he possibly could. Thankfully the car bomb malfunctioned and Shahzad was apprehended as he was about to take off on a plane to Dubai.

But this was no Homeland Security victory.

The day after the failed terrorist attack, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano quickly dismissed the attempted car bombing as a “one-off” event, implying that Shahzad acted alone. You may notice that the Obama administration uses this “lone wolf” theory to deflect criticism. How can we be expected to stop every “lone wolf” terrorist, the Obama administration asks?

For starters, how about looking at your own watch lists? According to CBS News, the Pakistan-born naturalized citizen has been on a Department of Homeland Security travel watch list since 1999.

Now, of course, the evidence is mounting that Napolitano’s knee-jerk reaction was dead wrong. Turns out Shahzad trained in Pakistan. And the Taliban is claiming credit for the attempted terrorist attack (with an assist from al-Qaida some authorities are suggesting).

Judith Miller published a list of ten questions emerging from this latest terrorist plot on Fox News. Here’s one I found most interesting: “Why did members of President Obama’s national security team — Napolitano, Holder, and Robert Gibbs (who as press secretary seems to be an insider even on national security issues and operating way beyond his pay grade) go out of their way to avoid using the term ‘terrorism’ to describe the failed attack until the obvious could no longer be denied? And why, to this day, has the term ‘Islamic’ never been linked with Shahzad or his plot?”

Here’s one thought. The Obama administration doesn’t want to use the word “terrorism” because they’d rather treat these incidents as criminal acts, not acts of war. Take note that Shahzad wasn’t turned over to the U.S. military or intelligence for questioning. He was arrested, questioned for a few hours, and read his Miranda rights like a common criminal.

This is par for the course for the Obama administration. The President still entertains the ridiculous notion of holding the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial in New York City. Hopefully this latest attack will put an end to this dangerous idea once and for all.

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Of course, some on the Left shamelessly used this attempted terrorist attack to take a shot at their new favorite whipping boy, the Tea Party.

Check this gem out from the liberal The Nation: “It may be that the Pakistan-based Taliban, the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has quietly established a Connecticut franchise while we weren't looking. That's possible. But it seems far more likely to me that the perpetrator of the bungled Times Square bomb plot was either a lone nut job or a member of some squirrely branch of the Tea Party, anti-government far right. Which actually exists in Connecticut, where, it seems, the car's license plates were stolen.”

And even New York Mayor Bloomberg maliciously speculated that the bomber was someone opposed to Obamacare.

The mendaciousness of the Left often knows no bounds.

There is a saying that it is better to be lucky than good. When it comes to fighting terrorism, we better be both. We lucked out this time. Just like we lucked out on Christmas Day, when alert passengers stopped a would-be terrorist from detonating a bomb on an airplane.

But sometimes we’re not so lucky. Remember the Fort Hood massacre? There again we were told there was no Islamic connection, despite the radical rantings and connections of Nidal Malik Hasan, another of the Obama administration’s lone wolves.

It turns out that Hasan and the Times Square terrorist are linked to the same radical cleric, Anwar Al-Awaki.

Law enforcement deserves credit for finding the terrorist in this case so quickly. But our national security apparatus, with its kinder, gentler approach to terrorism or “man-made disasters,” needs to answer why this terrorist was able to travel back and forth to Pakistan, consort with terrorists, plant a bomb in the heart of New York, and then nearly escape to Dubai as everybody in federal law enforcement was looking for him.

Tom Fitton
President

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