A war on terror by any other name continues on

Call it what you wish, but the enemy remains...

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23 year-old Nigerian national, bored a plane with no baggage, after paying cash for a one way ticket; once over US soil, he attempted to detonate a bomb. Did the system work, did the system fail? Volleying political talking points and the never-ending blame game will go on for some time, at least until the next big Page 1 headline.

We here at this publication are reminded of the Bush administration’s warning that our vigilance has to been ever present, right 100% of the time while the enemy only has to get it right once. Surely in a world of our size, there will be “cracks”, there will be “wrinkles”, there will be lapses in security – to think otherwise is naïve.

But this piece isn’t about assigning blame or calling for the flogging of the head of homeland security, it is about the instance itself and the reality behind it.

Since the Iraq invasion in 2003, critics of the liberation called it an occupation and throughout the 2008 presidential election, those on the same side purported that America had damaged its status in the world, should we step-back (or down) we would raise our stature again. When Mr. Obama became president, he moved to close GITMO, the phrase War on Terror was removed from the present administration’s vernacular, target dates have been set for withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and “torture” has been banned.

Yet on Christmas Day 2009, a young radicalized Muslim did not care about GITMO’s impending closure, nor did he care about plans to leave Iraq and Afghanistan, nor did he care how the president pronounces “Pakistan” or “Taliban”, he only cared to hate, to try and murder hundreds of people.

We are aware the president cannot stop terrorist acts with his bare hands, nor can he stop them with words, only a well equipped intelligence community and cutting-edge military.

-- Killswitch Politick

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