Christmas Day 2009 witnessed another attempted terrorist attack on U.S. territory. Al-Qaida and its affiliates intend to spill American blood on American soil -- lots of it.
For the clear-thinking, there is no question Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is a terrorist with connections. Yemen's government confirmed The Christmas Terrorist lived in Yemen from August to early December 2009. "Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula" (based in Yemen) claimed credit for operation.
Yet two days after the incident, the Obama administration's queen of incompetence, Janet Napolitano, said she had no evidence of a wider terrorist plot involving Abdulmutallab. Napolitano also stuck to the "terrorism is crime" narrative. Abdulmutallab committed an act of war, a strategic terror bombing of Detroit, but the ideologues running the Obama administration just can't acknowledge that. The Obama administration recently sent six Yemeni terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to Yemen. Why? Well, according to the terror apologists, George W. Bush treated these poor men like war criminals, which violated their rights ...
I think Maj. Nidal Hasan's hideous massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, was treason committed with the calculated use of terror tactics, which means al-Qaida has hit the U.S. since 9-11 and done so on Obama's watch. Time will tell, however, whether Hasan's al-Qaida imam Anwar Awlaki (who fled to Yemen) inspired him with Islamist nostrums and manipulative lies (my bet), or Hasan is a misunderstood psychotic alienated religious-minority victim the American System somehow failed to save and/or apprehend (the Obama administration's current spin, but that could change tomorrow, next week or, if necessary, by the next election).
Big mouths hooked to minds fogged with anti-American cant hindered U.S. defense efforts during the Cold War. Their descendant America haters in the Internet era provide philosophical succor to al-Qaida. The fanatics interpret apologies and guilt-trips as signs of weakness and incipient decay, the bleats of a corrupt culture wallowing in self-doubt. This is not conjecture. Pro-terrorists websites see the defeatist tripe as a divine sign al-Qaida is winning.
For decades, the Blame Amerika Crowd has made a media living alleging attacks on American citizens, U.S. embassies and U.S. territory are somehow, someway provoked by the U.S. The "America Is Guilty" smear would be a laugher except the major TV networks and The New York Times give this baloney headline credence, especially when a Republican is president. Heavens, tenure in entire departments of sociology and literature is predicated on promoting this narrative.
This band of blitherers spouts Marxist Cold War anti-American propaganda revamped for the Global War on Terror. See, the Cold War was America's fault, and great leftist minds of yore told us so. Like today's apologists for "misunderstood" terrorists, the Soviet Union had committed fans. In 1984 (George Orwell was prescient, wasn't he?), John Kenneth Galbraith wrote, "That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban scene ..." Don't snicker. Until the Berlin Wall cracked in 1989, a linked clique of "elite intellectuals" made a living spilling similar hooey.
A strong case can be made that perceived American weakness and its usual handmaiden, an apologetic and feckless American foreign policy, encourage our enemies.
The Soviet Union's decision to invade Afghanistan in December 1979 (this week is the 30th anniversary of that attack) followed a year of foreign policy failures and boggling diplomatic blunders by President Jimmy Carter and his administration.
Carter was ambivalent about the Shah of Iran, and dithered as his regime teetered and fell in early 1979 to Islamic revolutionaries led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. That November Khomeinists attacked the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took hostages. The event demonstrated Carter's utter spinelessness. The Shah had served as a "counterbalance" to the Soviet Union in central Asia. With the Shah kaput, the Russians had an opportunity to achieve a historical goal, extension of Russian controlled territory to the Indian Ocean -- the goal of the drive into Afghanistan.
Carter's weakness permitted the rise of both Khomeini's Islamic revolution (and its Islamist terrorism) and encouraged Soviet aggression. Moscow lost in Afghanistan, but the Afghan hornet's nest of warlords, terrorists and innocents in the crossfire remains. Now the Khomeinists are building nuclear bombs.
Obama has kowtowed to Iran's mullahs. Both Carter and Obama act as if they find American power to be a moral embarrassment instead of a means for defending our lives and our vital interests.