Saturday, December 26, 2009

It's Terrorism This Time

On Christmas Day an attempted bombing of a US airliner was averted when the would be bomber's explosive device failed to go off. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian with suspected links to al-Qaeda, tried to blow up Delta-owned Northwest Airlines flight 253 as it descended toward Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Nearly 300 people would've been killed had the bomb detonated as planned. Perhaps because of the withering criticism it received over its guarded response to the Fort Hood attack, the Obama administration wasted no time calling this attempted bombing an act of terrorism. Unfortunately, the new American administration is still committed to a pre-9/11 mentality regarding Islamic terrorism.

Rather than being put into military custody and "enhancedly" interrogated--or, better yet, summarily executed--Abdulmutallab was treated like a common criminal, taken into regular police custody and read the charges against him by a civilian judge who worried if he was pronouncing the Muslim's name right. All this while Abdulmutallab was being treated, presumably at taxpayers' expense, for burns received during his failed detonation attempt. But don't throw up just yet.

Back at the White House, Attorney General Eric "lets-try-KSM-in-New-York" Holder boldly declared that the US government was "vigorously" investigating the case and all those responsible would be "brought to justice". Wow! If that doesn't strike terror into the hearts of our enemies nothing will.

This is insane. How many Americans--how many Westerners of any nationality--have to die before the "progressive", multi-culti, don't-offend-the-Muslims crowd that's now in power will wake up and smell the proverbial coffee? Terrorists don't need to be "brought to justice"; they need to be killed. And if we're going to treat terrorism like a law enforcement problem, why didn't we stop Abdulmutallab before he got anywhere near a plane? I mean, there were warning signs about him just as there were about the Fort Hood terrorist.

Just weeks before he boarded flight 253, Abdulmutallab's own father had warned US officials about his son, saying he might be becoming militant. This led to A (tired of writing out the whole name) being put into a terrorism database but not on a no-fly list. He also wasn't put on a list for additional security checks. Apparently, that's how A was able not only to get near a plane but board with a bomb on his person. Can you say, incompetent? I knew you could!

This pre-9/11, law enforcement approach to terrorism has to go! It was tried all through the '70's, '80's, and '90's and was a colossal failure. The greatest testament to that failure was September 11, 2001. TREATING TERRORISM LIKE CRIME DOESN'T STOP TERRORISM. And the mojo of a left-wing Black president attuned to Third World grievances won't work, either. Barack Obama was supposed to end terrorism by brown nosing Muslims and apologizing for America's existence. Obviously, the Nigerian didn't get that memo.

We must wait and see what will happen to Abdulmutallab. The most likely scenario, given the current administration, is that he'll spend years tying up the civilian court system while using it as a pulpit to spew hateful anti-American, anti-Western jihadist rhetoric. And the American people will have the privilege of paying for it.

Now you can throw up.