Yes, Janet, There Is A 'War On Terror'

Posted 12/28/2009 07:11 PM ET

Napolitano must be removed. AP

Homeland Security: Al-Qaida's botched Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253 raises a series of concerns about U.S. vulnerability. Chief among them: a Homeland Security chief in denial that we are at war.

The nearly 300 trans-Atlantic passengers targeted for death by alleged would-be suicide bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab were saved not by any policy of the Homeland Security Department, but by the good luck of a detonator malfunctioning.

So how could Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have kept a straight face when she claimed in the immediate aftermath that "the traveling public is safe" and "the system worked"? Soon after, she was forced to agree during an NBC "Today" interview that the system of protecting the homeland from terrorists actually "failed miserably."

Abdulmutallab's father walked into the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria earlier this year to warn America about this fanatic. The U.S. apparently ignored the message. Can a system that looks such gift intelligence in the mouth be said by anyone to be working?

And how believable is the credibility-challenged Napolitano when she assures the nation the Christmas operation was not part of a larger terror plot when Abdulmutallab himself has told FBI agents other Yemen-based jihadists will strike soon?

The odds may remain pretty good for air travelers that they won't be sent to kingdom come by a shoe bomber like Richard Reid or an undergarment guerilla like Abdulmutallab, but does anyone really believe after this incident that "the traveling public is safe"?

A big part of the problem is that Secretary Napolitano and her boss, the president, do not want to believe we are at war — a long, hard war — against barbarians like the Christmas bomber, his friends in Yemen, the masterminds who run al-Qaida and terrorist states like Iran and Syria.

She and the president have employed a policy of not using the terms "war on terror" and "terrorism" because they might foster an atmosphere of fear. Well, when fanatics are determined to kill Americans by the planeload, it would be irrational not to be afraid — and not to convert our fears into effective action.

"Overseas contingency operations" and "man-made disasters," the favored substitute terms, are bureaucratese jargon designed to muddle the minds of the public and get people focused on this administration's domestic agenda of expanding the government.

Pretending away the global war on terror only invites attacks like the one we just saw, and this administration is shirking its duties to the American people in embracing such a mind-set.

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