President Barack Obama
In response to the Christmas Day attempted terror attack, President Obama’s actions and former Vice President Cheney’s comments highlight the differences between the two administrations: The Bush Administration was famous for not being “Reality Based” (NY Times). The Obama Administration investigates first, thinks, and ACTS(Reuters), while accepting responsibility for any failures. “Ultimately, the buck stops with me,” Obama said. “As president, I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people.” (CS Monitor)
On 12/29/9, President Obama said it was a systemic failure (Christian Science Monitor). On 1/3/10, he said the attack was planned in Yemen (NY Times). We also know he approved US counter-terror strikes in Yemen, which occurred on 12/24/09 (NPR / NYTimes) and which killed Al Queda Terrorists.
In response to the Christmas Day “incident” the President ordered the CIA to “Ensure that intelligence reports are distributed in a timely manner and improve how watchlist information is entered, reviewed, analyzed, and acted upon.” He ordered the State Department to “Review the processes and criteria for issuing and revoking visas, with an emphasis on counterterrorism concerns.” He ordered the Department of Homeland Security to “Pursue enhanced screening technology and procedures while taking into consideration civil liberties and privacy rights.” These and other actions are summarized here by Jeremy Pelofsky and Xavier Briand at Reuters. Obama also said “This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.”
Mr. Cheney attacked the President and the Administration, but oddly enough did not explicitly condemn the attack itself (Politico). The former VP, who claims the President wants to set them free, appears not to know what he’s talking about. President Obama wants to close Guantanamo and put the suspects in jail until they are tried in a court of law (Politico) and punished to the full extent of the law.
However, the Obama Administration needs to recognize what Amanda Ripley, writing in Time Magazine, 1/11/2010, The Lesson – Passengers Are Not Helpless, has observed and clearly elucidated:
- Regular people will always be first on the scene of terrorist attacks.
- We are not helpless.
- Fancy technology will never be foolproof.
- We should prioritize the public’s antiterrorism capability.
We also need:
- Technology that detects liquid explosives, especially PETN.
- Protocols that “red flag” travelers with one-way tickets, paid for in cash the same day as their flight, who travel with no luggage, especially when their father has warned the State Department the traveler is a radical with ties to Al Queda. (duh).
- Congress must cut homeland-security pork,
- Congress should support the Citizen Corps and non-governmental groups like Disaster Accountability Project.
- the FBI needs a better protocol for debriefing citizens after a terrorist incident.
This may have been recognized by the authors of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights who recognized gave to The People all rights and responsibilities not expressly given to the government.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
– Preamble to the US Constitution
In The Lesson: Passengers Are Not Helpless,
Ripley presents a compelling argument.
Since 2001, airline passengers — regular people without weapons or training — have helped thwart terrorist attacks aboard at least five different commercial airplanes. It happened again on Christmas Day. And as we do each and every time, we miss the point.
Consider the record: First, passengers on United Flight 93 prevented a further attack on Washington on 9/11. Then, three months later, American Airlines passengers wrestled a belligerent, biting Richard Reid to the ground, using their headset cords to restrain him. In 2007, almost a dozen passengers jumped on a gun-wielding hijacker aboard a plane in the Canary Islands. And this past November, passengers rose up against armed hijackers over Somalia. Together, then, a few dozen folks have helped save some 595 lives.
And yet our collective response to this legacy of ass-kicking is puzzling. … we build a slapdash pedestal for the heroes. Then we go back to blaming the government for failing to keep us safe, and the government goes back to treating us like children. This now familiar ritual distracts us from the real lesson, which is that we are not helpless. And since regular people will always be first on the scene of terrorist attacks, we should perhaps prioritize the public’s antiterrorism capability — above and beyond the fancy technology that will never be foolproof.
…
terrorism succeeds by making us feel powerless… a psychological threat /more often/ than an existential one. The authorities compound the damage when they overreact — by subjecting grandmothers to pat-downs and making it intolerable to travel. Even though the Christmas bombing suspect had been stopped, stripped and cuffed before the plane landed, we still talk like victims. …
Karen Sherrouse was a flight attendant on the jet that Richard Reid tried to blow up. … Sherrouse rushed to help. But she couldn’t get down the aisle because so many passengers had already joined the melee. “They were instantly on him,” she remembers. “It was a group effort.” And so it should be. The flight attendants can’t be everywhere at once. Nor can TSA officers or the FBI.
After the passengers of Flight 253 deplaned in Detroit, they were held in the baggage area for more than five hours until FBI agents interviewed them. They were not allowed to call their loved ones. They were given no food. When one of the pilots tried to use the bathroom before a bomb-sniffing dog had finished checking all the carry-on bags, an officer ordered him to sit down, according to passenger Alain Ghonda, who thought it odd. “He was the pilot. If he wanted to do anything, he could’ve crashed the plane.” It was a metaphor for the rest of the country: Thank you for saving the day. Now go sit down.