Since Barack Obama was elected president, the opportunity to seize national security credibility from Republicans for the long term has been there for the taking, and awaiting only a few things. Capture or death of Osama Bin Laden is the big prize, of course. But the inevitable attempted terrorist attack on Barack Obama’s watch, and the Republican response to it, offers the same opportunity.
The Christmas Day attack has given Barack the best of all worlds. Thank God, the attack failed, hilariously. Just as hilarious has been the utterly predictable Republican attack in response, whose main effect is to place a hard microscope on the Bush administration’s failings under similar circumstances. That hard look, to date, has never survived a media environment skewed toward Republican war mongering. That environment is gone, but Republicans attack as if it were still there. Republicans imagine that Americans like partisan sniping during, before, and after a national security crisis. That is a grave miscalculation. Thank you, GOP.
Under this new microscope, the specifics of this attack point to a long term failure of the Bush administration to button down even the most minimal level of governmental coordination demanded by 9/11, the 9/11 commission report, and much else. Such a systemic level of miscommunication, when warning flags are evident, is the exact same failure that led to 9/11. There is almost no substantive difference.
Republicans will try to blame the Obama White House, but what will follow is deep congressional investigation into the systems that the Bush administration left behind, systems that should certainly have been strong enough to prevent this attack no matter who was president. Those investigations will be done by a Congress that is no longer oriented toward long term military commitment in foreign lands, but oriented instead toward making sure this failure never happens again.
In other words, governing is about to ensue.
The Republican Congress under George W. Bush was simply not interested in governing, on any issue, particularly the weeds of internal US security. They were interested in neo-conservativism, proving their ideology even as it failed spectacularly before their eyes, cementing their majority through fear, and endless partisanship designed to perpetuate a perception within the electorate that Democrats can’t protect the country. That same perception is now about to haunt Republicans, particularly if (big if) Democrats in Congress take the lessons to heart which the Republican Congress refused to even acknowledge.
I’m quite certain this is an opportunity Barack Obama will take full advantage of.
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Dear GOP Narrative Operatives,
Here’s a clue. Your latest attempts to build on the failed narrative from the last campaign that Obama is soft on terrorism is fraught with danger. I know it is tempting and nearly a tourette’s like tic with you guys, but you must know that you are entering a world of pain with this one. A world of pain.
Let’s imagine for a minute that you even have ground to stand on. We’ll act as if your current criticism for delays in White House comment on the Detroit crotch bomber aren’t met by a 6 day delay by Bush commenting on Richard Reid. Reid’s failed shoe bombing happened on December 21, 2001 – just 3 short months after 9/11. Bush commented on the incident on December 28. A full week later. He thanked the stewardess and said it proved we were all on high alert. Then Attorney General John Ashcroft commented that intelligence agencies were sharing information with the American people in order to “enlist our assistance”. I’m sure this instilled a great amount of confidence and a warm secure feeling among the American People.
Let’s also pretend your Obama bashing for taking a vacation doesn’t immediately remind people that George W. Bush was on vacation for the entire month of August in 2001 as dire warnings were coming in that al-Qaida was “determined to strike in the U.S.” and Zacarias Moussaoui was learning how to fly a jumbo jet.
Again, Bush took a solid month off tying Richard Nixon for the longest Presidential vacation. Yet some wingnuts want to holler about too much golf and such nonsense. We’ll just act like this month long vacation while dire warnings of an imminent attack came in never happened. Guess what Bush was doing the day after the PDB entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US” was published?
Golfing.
Tip: If you are reading the “right-leaning” blogs in Ohio, stop. You won’t get any meaningful narratives that will stick. You’ll get a zinger or two here or there, but they are usually destroyed at will by us on the left. We’ve done it so much and with so much effectiveness we’ve begun to bore with it. Hell, we’ve even stopped reading them for the most part. It’s too easy.
Let’s also dismiss the entire notion of fixing the problem with intelligence agencies sharing data so that they might thwart future attacks. In a speech in February of 2003, then President Bush pledged to make information sharing an important tool in the “war on terror”. It wasn’t until 2007 that the Bush Administration published The National Strategy for Information Sharing. So much for a sense of urgency.
It all begs the question, really. How will you create a narrative about being soft on terrorism when your record shows you’ve been as ineffective over the course of two Presidential terms as you might claim this President has been in a quarter of one? Despite, mind you, the lack of a major attack on the country which you so proudly proclaim is your record of success.
Whose fault might it be that agencies don’t share data well enough to prevent a crotch bomber from getting on a plane bound for Detroit? Didn’t you have this fixed in the time between 2001 and 2008? It was obvious Republicans were working on this for years…or were they? I’ll stipulate they may have been a bit distracted by a war being waged on trumped up evidence in a country not related whatever to the current threat. A war which was spinning out of control and leading to unprecedented electoral defeat for the GOP. We’ll mark this down as duly noted.
So go for it. Bring on the soft on terrorism charges. They’ll be like political boomerangs on fire. They’ll revisit you and torch your narrative like a rich banker’s son’s nuts.
Go right ahead. Enter a world of pain if you must. Go down the road of reminding the American people how it is that the party in power during the most catastrophic attack on American soil is somehow able to now point the finger at the other party’s President and proclaim “soft on terror”.
Go there. Please.
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Update: Welcome Daily Dish readers! Thanks to link love from Andrew you may notice the site is a bit slow. Getting hammered today with record traffic (12/29). Thanks for visiting, following on Twitter, friending on Facebook, bookmarking, and signing up for weekly updates! You might also enjoy these posts on this topic:
Remembering How Far We’ve Come – Part 2
But for the lack of a lock on a cockpit door…
Why is the GOP so soft on terrorism?
……….
To those who think Barack Obama didn’t change this country enough for their liking, pay attention to how we as a society have already begun dealing with the Christmas Day terrorist attack differently. It is stark, pervasive, even in the air.
There is no fear. No panic. No alarmism. Not coming from this White House, not from any authorities, not from the passengers (who seem almost thrilled to be the heroes) and as a result, not even in the media. Republicans started whining from minute one, and got more whiny the less the White House used their preferred language of belligerence.
Under George W. Bush, or John McCain, the media narrative would already be settling on whether or not to invade Yemen. Now, the narrative is about soft power – how to reach these wealthy sons of bankers to stop them, how to tighten up our security at airports, how to support reform minded Muslims, how to give alternatives to potential Al Qaeda recruits who are not poor villagers but wealthy intellectuals with an axe to grind.
In other words, Republicans would be doing the terrorists work for them, by spreading more terror. Barack Obama is doing America’s work, by addressing the problem calmly, quietly, confidently. That leadership will translate into confidence in the American public the same way the panicked leadership of the Bush administration translated into fear.
Al Qaeda seems almost miffed that we aren’t panicking. I can’t really recall Al Qaeda so loudly and immediately claiming credit for any attack, not even 9/11. And yet, they’ve done so here, praising testicle toaster as a failed martyr, making him a banner headline, because the American response isn’t giving them enough ink.
In fact, there is a growing tinge of mockery of this terrorist for toasting his testicles. This dude who can’t light a fuse is gonna raise the terror threat level to orange? Please. It strikes me as practically British – laughing at the Nazis all the way to the rubble pile in the East End. We’re laughing at Al Qaeda, for the first time, in unison, as a country. Think about that.
Make no mistake – in the Muslim world to which Al Qaeda attempts to speak, this episode is a total humiliation, seen as such, and will hurt Al Qaeda. I can’t think of a more effective way to scupper Al Qaeda recruitment than to turn one of their attacks into a worldwide joke. Yes it will enrage them. Yes, they will try harder to hit us again.
But now, we have leadership that can crush them, by turning Al Qaeda’s weaknesses into our strength.
That’s change. Come to think of it….why didn’t we try this before?
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I’m going to echo Eric’s thoughts on the Christmas Day testicle roast that now has America again looking at airport security, with Republicans already using the issue to attack our country’s president.
Back in the day before such calm leadership graced the White House this would be an opportunity to exploit the fears of the American people….Mouth breathing Obama bashing Palin sycophants only understand monosyllabic grunts that talk about Muslims, terr-rists, and war. They don’t even recognize competent leadership when they see it.
I’m actually quite happy that Republicans came out the gate bashing Obama, even interrupting their Christmas Day to do so. Because average Americans – read “swing voters” – have known all along that if there was a lock on the cockpit doors on 9/11, the world would be a different place today.
I’ve done a lot of international travel, much of it through Schipol in Amsterdam, where the testicle roaster changed planes. And it has been obvious to me since well before 9/11 that the way to defeat security is precisely the way this fellow did it. Get on a plane in someplace (say…Nigeria) where it is easy to defeat security, perhaps bribe your way on, then change planes within the security envelope in, say, Amsterdam.
Hell, I’ve done it myself. I once had to bribe my way through passport control in Almaty, Kazakhstan – long story, but I was without the proper visa, in the middle of the night, the visa office was conveniently closed, which is a situation post-soviet passport control people love to have you in, the better to meet your good friend Ben Franklin by.
Once en route to your connecting city, no second security check – you’re already inside the castle walls. Just hit the McDonald’s in the airport, and wait for the plane to board. En route to the US, whenever I change planes in Amsterdam, or Frankfurt, or London, my guard is up a little higher, a bit more alert, knowing that whoever got to this flight from an originating city would be waltzing through carrying whatever they managed to get by security in their original flight from…say…Lagos.
Leadership matters. Republican leadership after 9/11 took our country and the world down a rabbit hole into hell, when it was plainly obvious from Minute One that the 19 hijackers merely walked through doors left open by our system’s gaping loop holes in security. We have spent years working on that security, seemingly chasing our own tails, and it looks like we need to do more work. But the solution is not some war, either in Yemen, or Nigeria, or anywhere else.
Just as the solution to 9/11 was not to invade Iraq. It was to destroy Al Qaeda, wherever they were, and PUT A FUCKING LOCK ON THE COCKPIT DOOR FOR GOD’S SAKE. It is an outrage that incoming flights to the US from Amsterdam Schipol still do not subject connecting passengers to another thorough security check. Whether or not that would have stopped testicle roaster dude, who knows. But that’s where the hole is.
Thank God we have mature leadership in the White House that can bring resources to bear on the problem, instead of using the opportunity to deploy resources in service to some absurd ideology.
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Earlier I posted about how far we’ve come in executive leadership by noting an article about a con man who duped the Bush Administration into thinking he could decode Al Jazeera broadcasts that contained messages for terrorists.
The recent failed attempt to down a passenger jet over Detroit again reminds me of how far we’ve come. A diarist at DailyKos does a good job of putting together thoughts on something that occurred to me while watching the never-ending coverage of a rich Nigerian son who burned off his nut sack in an attempt to kill over 200 people in an attempted act of terror.
The contrast between the reactions is stunning. As the diarist points out, The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder nails it:
There is a reason why Obama hasn’t given a public statement. It’s strategy.
Here’s the theory: a two-bit mook is sent by Al Qaeda to do a dastardly deed. He winds up neutering himself. Literally.
Authorities respond appropriately; the President (as this president is want to to) presides over the federal response. His senior aides speak for him, letting reporters know that he’s videoconferencing regularly, that he’s ordering a review of terrorist watch lists, that he’s discoursing with his Secretary of Homeland Security.
But an in-person Obama statement isn’t needed; Indeed, a message expressing command, control, outrage and anger might elevate the importance of the deed, would generate panic (because Obama usually DOESN’T talk about the specifics of cases like this, and so him deciding to do so would cue the American people to respond in a way that exacerbates the situation.
Obama of course will say something at some point. Had the terrorist blown up the plane, it;s safe to assume that Obama would no longer be in Hawaii. In either case, the public will need presidential fortification at some point. But Obama is willing to risk the accusation that he is “soft” on terrorism or is hovering above it all, or is just not to be bothered (his “head’s in the sand, “golfing comes first,” )in order to advance what he believes is the proper collective response to a failed act of terrorism.
Let the authorities do their work. Don’t presume; don’t panic the country; don’t chest-thump, prejudge, interfere, politicize (in an international sense), don’t give Al Qaeda (or whomever) a symbolic victory; resist the urge to open the old playbook and run a familiar play.
In a sense, he is projecting his calm on the American people, just as his advisers are convinced that the Bush Administration projected their panic and anger on the self-same public eight years ago.
Of course wingnuts longing for the days of Bush would rather have the President on a megaphone talking about how we’re going to re-invade Iraq or some shit. I’m sure they have and will go after Obama as irresponsible to go golfing instead of kill him some Moose-lims. It’s obvious those days are long gone. We have an adult in the White House. Their other point will most likely be that it “wasn’t on Bush’s watch”, though they failed to blame Bush for 9/11 in any way. Utterly predictable these loons.
Back in the day before such calm leadership graced the White House this would be an opportunity to exploit the fears of the American people. Put administration officials on TV, including the Vice President, and talk about how dangerous “these people” are and bend language to later justify some planned overstepping. Maybe Obama should invoke Bush and tell the American people if we don’t pass health care reform the terrorists like Abdulmutallab win.
Steve Benen (also linked by the Kos diarist), hits the other nail on the head:
Obama and his team obviously prefer a far more mature, strategic approach. It’s about projecting a sense of calm and control. It’s about choosing not to elevate some lunatic thug who set himself on fire.
Indeed, notice the pattern throughout the year. The Obama administration has taken out Saleh al-Somali, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, and Baitullah Mehsud, while taking suspected terrorists Najibullah Zazi, Talib Islam, and Hosam Maher Husein Smadi into custody before they could launch potential attacks.
In each case, there were no high-profile press conferences, no public chest-thumping, no desire to politicize the counter-terrorism successes. Indeed, most of the country probably never heard a word about any of these developments.
It’s about competent and effective leadership, and it’s what the country was sorely lacking up until 11 months ago.
Mouth breathing Obama bashing Palin sycophants only understand monosyllabic grunts that talk about Muslims, terr-rists, and war. They don’t even recognize competent leadership when they see it.
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Amid all the HCR disappointment, Copenhagen hand wringing, and teabag nonsense, let’s remember just how far we’ve come. While the media and the right want to make a big deal of some White House attention seeking party crashers, today we note a report that a known liar and thief duped the Bush Administration into believing he could decode broadcasts from Al Jazeera into future actions of terrorists.
(Note: When your own attorney brands you a “habitual liar engaged in fraud”, that’s a bad thing)
You may remember some hinting among the right about terrorists using secret codes in Al Jazeera broadcasts. Turns out the basis for this was a con man who convinced the 9/11 punch drunk Bush Administration and Pentagon into thinking he had technology that could “crack the code” to understand what the terrorists would do next.
He couldn’t explain it. He couldn’t give them the algorithms, but they gave him money anyway and raised the terror alert level to Orange!
This was the level of incompetence of our former administration:
The federal government was acting on the Al Jazeera claims without even understanding how Montgomery found his coordinates. “I said, ‘Give us the algorithms that allowed you to come up with this stuff.’ They wouldn’t even do that,” says the first officer. “And I was screaming, ‘You gave these people fucking money?’”
The best part of it all is this delicious irony:
A branch of the French intelligence services helped convince the Americans that the bar codes were fake.
Freedom Fries ahoy!
We all too soon forget the travesty that was the Bush Administration and our dismissal of it and all it stood for. When we begin to judge how far from perfect our current administration is, let’s remember who re-calibrated the scale downward.
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Not part of the movement? Riiiight!
In the rear window of the 1993 blue Ford Taurus that he was driving was a red rose, a symbol often used by abortion opponents. On the rear of his car was a Christian fish symbol with the word “Jesus” inside… Dinwiddie said she met Roeder while picketing outside the Kansas City Planned Parenthood clinic in 1996. Roeder walked into the clinic and asked to see the doctor, Robert Crist, she said. “Robert Crist came out and he stared at him for approximately 45 seconds,” she said. “Then he (Roeder) said, ‘I’ve seen you now.’ Then he turned his back and walked away, and they were scared to death. On the way out, he gave me a great big hug and he said, ‘I’ve seen you in the newspaper. I just love what you’re doing.’”
Nothing to see here. Lone gunman. Please move on. Amen.
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Seventy-two percent of those questioned in the poll, which was released Monday, disagree with Cheney’s view that some of Obama’s actions have put the country at greater risk, with 26 percent agreeing with the former vice president.
EOM
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Wow. I shoulda taken the under! Under a week into the new Presidency of Barack Obama and the right has clearly lost it’s ever-loving mind. I mean they are in full on meltdown “WTF just happened Tuesday” mode! It would be joyous if it weren’t so disturbing at the same time. Glenn Beck making an ass out of himself over the second swearing in with no Bible (despite facts). Rush Limbaugh wanting Obama (and America) to fail. Tom Blumer recycling yet again his old 6 degrees of Barack Hussein Obambi Obama terrorism post.
When you strive for complete irrelevancy this must be what it looks like.
This is going to be fun – in a Sarah Palin kinda way. You want to fear or even get upset at it but all you can muster is laughter. The hysterical kind of laughter that results from someone being so unhinged from reality as to make a mockery of themselves. True and righteous hilarity.
Thankfully we have Jon Stewart, who – again – goes to the point like none other:
…and no, Tom. I won’t apologize for “calling you a motherfucker“, or rather doing so to make a rhetorical point about your use of Hussein as distinct from that of Barack himself. One might think you were intelligent enough to know the difference but maybe not. Your commenting here will be restricted as well (Tom banned me from directly countering his BS at his blog via comments). No comments, trackbacks, or links unless and until you issue a full and open apology to the President of the United States Barack Hussein Obama. An apology long overdue for claiming your President may have ties or is sympathetic to or is supporting TERRORISTS. Your move.
I’m glad Tim is watching. Tom Blumer could be a danger to our country and President Obama by using the type of rhetoric he is using. Hopefully the Secret Service is paying attention to Tom Blumer at Bizzyblog.com too! For the safety of our nation. Making a claim that the sitting President of the United States of America is a terrorist, sympathizes with them, or even supports them is as un-American as it gets. One might even argue treasonous.
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I surely hope someone can look into the deeper connections between John Sidney McCain and Mustafa Abu Naba’a.
What a name. Mustafa Abu Naba’a. Sounds Muslim or something. Maybe even…
TERRIST!
John McCain’s campaign announced Thursday night that it’s returning about $50,000 in contributions believed to be brought in by a foreign citizen.
The actions late Thursday followed a move earlier in the day by the campaign that it would be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations brought in by Florida businessman Harry Sargeant, after reports that his business partner – Mustafa Abu Naba’a, who is not an American citizen – may have been connected with the fundraising efforts.
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Duh. What lefty hasn’t been saying this for – oh i dunno – 7 years or so?
By analyzing a comprehensive roster of terrorist groups that existed worldwide between 1968 and 2006, the authors found that most groups ended because of operations carried out by local police or intelligence agencies or because they negotiated a settlement with their governments. Military force was rarely the primary reason a terrorist group ended, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory.
No wingnut blog will link to it though, I’m sure. They don’t want to have to own up to the idea that brute military force and their “support for troops” is the solution to everything the free market can’t fix. Idiots.
Using the term “global war on terror” is something Democrats never should have been suckered into using and they should have called it “counterterrorism” just like we always have. The term global war on terror (GWOT) was an intential misrepresentation of facts that was used to wage an illegal, immoral, and unjust war in Iraq.
If we had only listened to the sane in the beginning instead of falling prey to our fears and the propaganda, we wouldn’t have to lament at reading this some 7 years later.
So can we stop pretending we are “at war” now and just admit to ourselves that we never were? You fight terrorism with good intelligence and police work. Not by bombing the shit out of countries not responsible for the terrorism you used to bomb them.
Those righties who pretend to know what they are talking about concerning terror groups need to admit this as well. I don’t expect them to lower the charade anytime soon though. Their delusion is as wide as it is deep.
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He’s at it again. Though quiet mostly just after the New Yorker cover, Tom Blumer is “bizzy” trying to hint that Obama is a terrorist. Wink wink. Nudge nudge:
Here’s more proof (as if needed) that the ingrates who don’t like how I use Barack Obama’s middle name don’t appreciate the favor I do for him on a mostly-daily basis.
Scott Whitlock at NewsBusters reports that columnist Thomas Friedman of the quickly-contracting New York Times told Good Morning America’s Diane Sawyer the following:
I was in Cairo a few weeks ago. And one of things that was so striking is how impressed Egyptians were, simply with the prospect that after 9/11, Americans might actually elect a man whose middle name was Hussein.
Well, if Egyptian pride is to mean anything, Americans simply must know that the presidential candidate with the middle name Hussein actually HAS the middle name Hussein.
I am pleased to continue providing such a valuable service, and encourage others to assist in this important endeavor. :–>
Since he conveniently ignored the New Yorker story, I thought I’d make it easy on Tom and provide him with a nice site graphic he can use. Feel free to download and display proudly on your site, Tom. You motherfucker you. 160 pixel width, which I think will work perfectly on BizzyBlog.com.
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