A slowly dawning realization

By Thomas Lifson

Barack Obama could get you killed. That's the reluctant conclusion more and more Americans are contemplating in the wake of the bizarre handling of the Northwest 253 attempted bombing. "Feckless" is one of the kinder terms one could use to describe the Keystone Kops approach of the Obama team to the War on Terror.

Janet Napolitano's reassurances to the public that "everything went according to clockwork" were so wacky as to be alarming. Obama's first interruption of his golf game to speak to the American people was so detached as to create the impression that the many simply is not taking seriously his responsibility to protect and defend the American people and their Constitution. His second interruption of his golf game was slightly less detached, but featured disembodied language ("a systematic failure has occurred") with no actual people failing. The buck never even gets close to this president, though Janet Napolitano may soon be hearing a bus motor revving up, and the wheels approaching.

Once the label "unserious" begins to attach itself to a leader, there is no going back. Dick Cheney, understanding exactly what is transpiring in the public mind, has encapsulated the fears:

"As I've watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won't be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won't be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won't be at war.

"He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda trained terrorists still there, we won't be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,' we won't be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren't, it makes us less safe. Why doesn't he want to admit we're at war? It doesn't fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn't fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency - social transformation-the restructuring of American society. President Obama's first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war."

And Sarah Palin has yet to be heard from on the subject.

George W. Bush never really recovered from his PR errors in handling Hurricane Katrina. Of course, Bush had the entire press corps invested in belittling him and exaggerating the damage (remember the reports of cannibalism inside the Suprdome?). The media will no doubt be more generous to Obama, but Bush never renamed hurricanes as a "domestic weather contingency" and was not invested in denying that hurricanes were a serious problem. Nor did he insists on treating hurricanes as a law enforcement matter.

Obama's disconnect is rooted in his policies, and he will be loath to change them. If Yemeni sources are to be believed, more attacks are on their way soon. Unlike hurricanes, terror attacks know no season.