President Obama met on Tuesday with his Cabinet and national security team to discuss the intelligence failures that led to the near catastrophic terrorist attack on Christmas Day.
But it was clear from the press statement he delivered after that meeting that he can offer no explanation for the slew of “red flags” telegraphing this attack that all went unheeded – other than to concede that it was a serial “screw up.”
No doubt this is why he made such a point of conveying unbridled indignation on Tuesday when he said the following:
When a suspected terrorist is able to board a plane with explosives on Christmas Day, the system has failed in a potentially disastrous way. It’s my responsibility to find out why and to correct that failure so we can prevent such attacks in the future.
This was not a failure to collect intelligence. It was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already have. The information was there… It is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged. That’s not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it….
Accordingly, he announced a series of new information-sharing protocols yesterday. These are designed to help intelligence officials do a better job of “connecting the dots” to capture or kill the next wannabe suicide bomber before he (or she) boards a plane destined for the United States.
Alas, the problem is that there really isn’t much more that Obama, or any leader, can do. After all, America’s alphabet soup of intelligence agencies were all integrated under the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11 precisely to “fully analyze” and “fully leverage” such intelligence.
Moreover, no matter how many enhanced, “seen and unseen” screening measures are implemented at airports across the US, there’s no way to ensure that similar measures will be implemented at every airport across the globe from which over two thousand flights depart for the US each day. Even if they were, poorly trained screeners (as they invariably are) at these airports are even more likely to miss red flags than the highly trained (US) intelligence officers who missed the red flags that led to this Christmas Day fiasco.
Meanwhile, what these new measures will succeed in doing is exacerbating the frustrations and apprehensions that accompany airline travel these days. Most notable in this respect is Obama’s order requiring all US-bound travelers from 14 countries suspected of harbouring terrorists to be subjected to full-body, pat-down searches and “enhanced interrogations” about the purpose and other matters related to their travel.
But even this seems designed more to score political points than to ensure airline safety. After all, I see no point in burdening travelers from Cuba in this way when no airline terrorist has ever hailed from that country.
More to the point, it is manifestly clear that all a terrorist has to do to avoid this heightened scrutiny is to board a plane for the US from a less suspicious country like the UK. Never mind that the UK is probably harbouring more terrorists today than Cuba or many of the other countries on that list….
This is why I don’t blame Fidel Castro for denouncing his order as a “hostile action.” And it is why I don’t blame my friends in Nigeria (the country with the largest Muslim population in Africa) for accusing Obama of ascribing guilt to 150 million of them based on the misguided act of one citizen.
Not to mention the insult this will add to the grief the Nigerian father of this wannabe terrorist must be feeling. After all, he literally warned US intelligence officers about his son’s intent, and their failure to act has now resulted in his nation being designated a haven for terrorists. Well, so much for Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world, eh….
Actually, instead of stoking the kind of anti-Americanism that only fuels al Qaeda’s recruitment drive, which this order is bound to do, Obama should lead, and the US should fund, a global initiative to standardize airport security. And more priority should be given to training airport personnel to properly screen or profile travelers based on established factors than to having them frisk people, including old ladies, indiscriminately.
Ultimately, though, I cannot reiterate enough how delusional it is to think that America can win this war against terrorism – when the mere threat of an al Qaeda attack or even a man carelessly walking into a restricted area of an airport is enough to panic and disrupt the country from coast to coast.
This of course makes Obama’s following declaration ring hollow:
… we will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans, because great and proud nations don’t hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust. That is exactly what our adversaries want. And so long as I am president, we will never hand them that victory.
News flash Mr President, the victory is already theirs!
Then there’s the truly terrifying fact that al Qaeda has become so sophisticated that it was able to turn a Jordanian doctor – who US intelligence officials say was their “best al-Qaeda informant in years” – into a suicide bomber who took out seven CIA agents in Afghanistan last week….
I will hold my staff, our agencies and the people in them accountable when they fail to perform their responsibilities at the highest levels.
Apropos words ringing hollow, Obama gave credence to the caricature of him as being “all bark and no bite” when he refused to fire anyone for the alarming security breach that occurred last November during the first State Dinner of his presidency. Now I fear he will only reinforce this caricature if he refuses to fire anyone for this screw up.
Related commentaries:
Terror in the sky…
Crashers at Obama State Dinner…
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