Sometimes all the talk about terrorism gets a little confusing to me. Or maybe I should say the lack of talk about terrorism gets confusing. There seems to be a tendency in the new administration to talk differently than the past administration about the people and organizations that seem bent on killing as many Americans as possible for no other reason than they don’t like our culture, or what they think of as our culture.
What used to be considered military action by foreign combatants now seems to be not significantly different than street crime. The situation with the miscreant who tried to blow one of our airliners out of the sky Christmas day is a good example. The president called him an isolated extremist, though he appeared not to be isolated, having received plenty of coaching and mentoring from other radicals. And the extremist was apparently provided an attorney who told him to stop talking to interrogators and entered a plea of not guilty for him.
But on the other hand, the president was apparently very unhappy that the bomber was allowed to get on the plane he wanted to blow up. The president called the head of Homeland Security and the appropriate U.S. intelligence into his office and more than likely expressed his displeasure to them. But it seems to me all the talk about who knew what when and what they did with the information is not what’s relevant. There’s no way we’ll ever know, with any degree of certainty, why the system failed to prevent the bomber from getting on the plane.
What seems more relevant to me is, if the president thinks the bomber is just a common criminal, and his actions on the plane were those of an isolated extremist, why is he giving the U.S. intelligence community a hard time about it? Since when does the CIA get involved in common criminal activity?
Now, it may be that the president has made the decision to start using intelligence operatives that way. I haven’t heard him say anything about it, but of course, he would probably keep it under his hat if he had made that decision. Besides, what he says one day doesn’t necessarily hold true the next. But even so, he can’t have it both ways.
If the activities of the scumbag who tried to blow up our airplane warrants the scrutiny and intercession of our national intelligence arm, it’s hard to argue that he is little more than a street thug to be dealt with as we would any common criminal. Local civilian law enforcement should be handling the case. But if he is nothing more than a street thug, seems to me we’re overreacting a bit to call it a national security issue involving a well-organized international terrorist organization peopled by radical foreign nationals.
It seems to me there is, potentially at least, a bright side to all this, though. Our society is plagued by another epidemic of lawlessness involving murder, kidnapping, robbery, burglary, theft, and vandalism by reasonably well-organized groups including foreign nationals. These gangs of street thugs are severely taxing the resources of civilian law enforcement. How about a little help from the CIA with that situation? Maybe we could create a new federal agency. Rather than Homeland Security how about Hometown Security?
OK, OK, I’m joking. But the administration’s refusal to call a Muslim terrorist a Muslim terrorist and deal with him accordingly is not funny. It has had the very real consequence of putting us all in deadly peril. The president has said the buck stops with him when it comes to national security. Fair enough. He needs to start with some straight talk. -RB