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House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's constant proximity to Crazy Nancy has apparently infected him with a similar inability to perceive reality - or at least the same utter willingness to ignore it, as the case may be. The other day, with a straight face, Hoyer claimed that "the Obama administration has been more successful in combating terrorism than its predecessor." Says Hoyer:
We're tough on terrorists. That’s our policy. That’s our performance. And, in fact, we've been more successful.
Killing known terrorists with drones in Pakistan was started by Bush and continued by Obama. It is a good thing. But Obama has made it his centerpiece of combatting terrorism while severly curtailing the most important part of any anti-terrorism campaign - human intelligence.
There were no large scale successful acts of Islamic terrorism in the U.S. during the Bush years. There have already been four acts or attempted acts of significant terrorism on Obama's watch and, as I explained in detail here, Obama is determined, on fatuous grounds using the language of morality - to deconstruct much of our ability to respond to terrorism through acquisition of human intelligence. Indeed, Obama is in the process of making our nation far less safe than it was when he took office.
Obama has been incredibly lucky that the two bombing incidents - the Christmas Day Undiebomber and the Times Square bombing attempt - both of which could have caused massive casualties, failed only through pure luck. Critically, nothing that Obama and the left did impacted on the failure of either bomb to detonate, though apparently Hoyer and the left are claiming that as a successful part of their efforts at "combatting terrorism." It is utterly surreal. [Update: Ann Coulter adds to that in her column today:
. . . [I]t would be a little easier for the rest of us not to live in fear if the president's entire national security strategy didn't depend on average citizens happening to notice a smoldering SUV in Times Square or smoke coming from a fellow airline passenger's crotch.
But after the car bomber, the diaper bomber and the Fort Hood shooter, it has become increasingly clear that Obama's only national defense strategy is: Let's hope their bombs don't work!
If only Dr. Hasan's gun had jammed at Fort Hood, that could have been another huge foreign policy success for Obama.
The administration's fingers-crossed strategy is a follow-up to Obama's earlier and less successful "Let's Make Them Love Us!" plan.]
It is unrealistic to expect that any administration will be able to stop a true lone wolf terrorist. But three of the four acts or attempted acts of terrorism on U.S. soil on Obama's watch have not been lone wolves. Major Hassan, the Ft. Hood shooter, was tied to an al Qaeda cleric. His act of terrorism never should have come to fruition. Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day Undiebomber, was tied directly to al Qaedea and certainly should have been on the no-fly list. And how weak is our intelligence that the most recent would be jihadi, Faisal Shahzad, was apparently never identified as a threat, even though he spent months in Pakistan attending jihadi training camps on how to make a bomb and was in telephone contact with people known to have terrorist ties.
I applaud the efforts of our investigative services to quickly find and apprehend Shahzad after the attempted bombing. I also believe that the Administration's hands were pretty well tied in how they treated Shahzad in terms of Constitutional protections. Those claiming that he shouldn't have been read Miranda are on far more tenuous grounds when it comes to Shahzad, and I for one won't criticize the administation's handling of him at this point.
But what should concern every American is that Shahzad's act occurred to begin with. That is the difference between the Obama and Bush approach. Obama takes a criminal investigative approach to the war on terror which, by its very definition, is reactive. Bush prosecuted this as a war with emphasis on ending terrorist plots before they ever got to the point of failing or succeeding solely on the vagaries of fate.
It is only those vagaries that allow Hoyer to make his ridiculous claim today. However, everything we have seen involving the last three terrorist incidents tells us that it is only a matter of time before masses of Americans die or are injured by terrorist acts on American soil. Hoyer and the left's luck can only hold out so long. Then their spin will fall utterly flat and the debate on how to conduct a war on terror will end. It is a crime that it will take American blood before the left comes to grips with reality. And even then, it is not the blood that will bother them, but the votes. Hoyer and his ilk are contemptible indeed.
