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Monologue- January 6, 2010
First, I want to give you my personal take on President Obama’s address to the nation that he made shortly after we spoke with him yesterday. He talked in a combination of sober terms about the challenges we face- as he puts it, “the challenge of utmost urgency confronts us as we deal with Al-Qaeda and its extremist allies.” He adopted some of the bravura of the commander-in-chief as he promised to thwart the plans of those “extremists” -as he insists on calling them- pledging “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat their networks once and for all.”
He then proceeded to drill a little bit down on the problem that took place on Christmas Day when we very narrowly lost 300 or so of our colleagues, comrades, countrymen on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, and heavens knows how many more on the ground had Al-Qaeda and its perpetrator had their way by detonating this explosive device concealed in his underwear, with debris flying everywhere on perhaps quite populated areas on the ground below. The President assures that he is going to find out why the system failed in a potentially disastrous way- that he was going to correct that failure and by gum he is going to prevent such attacks in the future.
I don’t mean to quibble about this, I think those are all the right sorts of things to be saying. I found troubling the demeaning way he dealt with his subordinates. It’s one thing to be disappointed, even furious, at those who are supposed to be protecting us. It’s a fine line to walk, though when you need them- you need their help and I’m not sure all the statements in the world about how supportive he is of them, particularly as we heard last week when seven members of the Central Intelligence Agency team apparently were murdered by a suicide bomber in Khost in Afghanistan. But then he spoke quite eloquently about what these people are doing for others, and he did a little bit yesterday as well but he certainly made it clear what went on in this case was not acceptable and he will not tolerate.
I would feel better about this if the President were evincing any interest in correcting the underlying problem. You know, he’s spending a lot of time on health care these days- too much in my way of thinking, and not with very good effect in my view. But he is presumably acquainted by virtue of this deep familiarity with our health care system with the difference between trying to treat a lethal disease- one that will kill the patient, in this case many patients, unless it is dealt with in a manner that addresses the root causes, not simply the symptoms.
And I see no evidence that the President is going to the root cause- which is you heard me say before, and you will hear me say again, I believe is that the people that we are having wage war against us believe God compells them to destroy us, or at least to force us into submission pursuit to what they call Sharia. That missing ingredient in this problem which we’ve talked with Steve Coughlin and Robert Spencer and so many others here at Secure Freedom Radio denies us the ability to develop- let alone execute a strategy for defeating people who have this ideological purpose and this determination to triumph. So that’s what’s missing here.
The last piece I wanted to touch on is the President did speak about Guantanamo Bay and the prospect of sending detainees now held there from Yemen back home, and we’re gonna play a clip of this because I want you to hear the defensiveness in his voice and the continuing failure to appreciate that he’s actually signalling weakness, not strength in this sort of action. [PLAYS CLIP] So you don’t need to worry folks- he’s not gonna let these people out unless we’re absolutely protected and yet then he goes on to say, both some good news and some bad news and we’ll go to it. [PLAYS CLIP]
We’re going to close it no matter what he keeps saying. I take some heart from the fact that as recently as the weekend his counterterrorism “czar” John Brennan was saying that they were going to send these prisoners back to Yemen, no matter what. Maybe not- and maybe we won’t be closing Guantanamo Bay, at least I hope so. If Congress has its way, and if they’ve heard from you-that probably won’t be possible. We ought to make sure and I hope you will- do everything in your power while your members of Congress, your legislative representatives here in Washington are back home with you, this month-what remains of it, to tell them: do not allow the President to close Guantanamo Bay, to send these detainees anyplace where they will in fact threaten our security.
Now let me conclude with this thought: I’m often told that we’re not going to get this bit right about Sharia, let alone putting the country on a war footing to deal with our enemies properly and effectively until we have been attacked in a massive and even catastrophic way again- I always pray that wouldn’t be necessary and maybe this narrowly averted attack over the skies of Detroit allows us an opportunity to avoid having to suffer yet again such a painful experience before doing something about the problem. But there’s nothing in the President’s remarks that suggest he’s getting it and his pronouncements about how he’s not going to put up with this and he will assist on accountability and so on, do not suggest he is willing to grapple with the metal yet.
In this absence of this, we need a Team B as we’ve talked about before- we need a second opinion. I would call on Leon Panetta, the Director of Central Intelligence, to do what his predecessor, George Herbert Walker Bush did 30-odd years ago: get outside experts in, and get them with the proper skepticism- we don’t want just yes men, we want people who believe as I do that there’s a piece of the puzzle that’s missing and we need to address it. Get them in there, give them the data, help them tell the President what he needs to really know to fix the systemic problems that threaten us all.
Well that’s my take on it. Love to hear yours. Secure Freedom.org or Frank Gaffney facebook and twitter accounts.
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