Nowhere is incompetence more clearly on display than in Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, and her handling of the Christmas-day attempt to bomb an airliner flying into Detroit from Amsterdam. After a bushel basket full of warning signs were ignored by the Department of Homeland Security and the rest of the federal government, a terrorist came close to blowing up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 and killing its nearly 300 passengers and crew. Only luck, the incompetence of the terrorist, and the quick thinking of some of the passengers averted a disaster that could have cost 300 lives. Yet Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano started out by saying, “The system worked.” The system failed at every level, and ignored the most direct and obvious warnings. What’s more astounding about that idiotic statement is that Napolitano kept repeating it at different media outlets. This suggests incompetence at high levels in her department and at the White House.
By itself, all of the above is ironclad evidence of total incompetence. But it is part of a larger pattern of total incompetence all of the time by Napolitano (and by Obama for sending her out to speak on the matter and for appointing her in the first place). You may recall her first testimony before Congress did not use the words terror, terrorists, or terrorism. Napolitano and the administration at first wanted to banish those words from the vocabulary and substitute such descriptions as “man-caused disaster” and for the war on terror the words “overseas contingency operations.” After finishing this column, the Sunday papers reported that in Obama’s Saturday radio talk, finally said, that he was well aware that “our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.” That is the equivalent of FDR waiting until 1944 (instead of December 7, 1941) to recognize we were at war against Japan and Germany. Obama, The Incompetent, still can’t bring himself to call the enemy by the right name – Islamic terrorism or some variation thereof.
In an earlier interview, Napolitano suggested that the Mexican and Canadian borders demanded equal attention. She explained, “Yes, Canada is not Mexico. It doesn’t have a drug war going on. Nonetheless, to the extent that terrorists have come into our country…it’s been across the Canadian border.” When asked if that included the terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attack, she said, “Not just those, but others as well.” By now everyone in the world, except for Secretary Napolitano, knows that the 9/11 terrorists didn’t come in over the Canadian border. When you are totally ignorant on such basic and important facts about 9/11 that proves you are incompetent as Secretary of Homeland Security and even incompetent as a citizen of the U.S. There’s one other alarming piece of evidence suggesting how inept she is. She actually wasn’t asked whether the system worked. The CNN anchor asked her whether the government had confirmed the al Qaeda connection. So she did not make the idiotic statement under pressure of tough questioning. She volunteered it, adding another dimension to proof of her incompetence and perhaps her outright stupidity.
Later, Napolitano said she was taken out of context. I’m afraid not, and there’s a pattern when she has to retreat from stupid statements. When she finally realized the 9/11 people did not come in over the Canadian border, she claimed she “misunderstood” the original question. What makes her excuses so unconvincing is that in her position she surely could anticipate the questions and could have thought through her answers so as to avoid misunderstanding. Yet, she still went over the edge, still more evidence of her total incompetence. In any event, if you listen to the interview, you can hear for yourself that her answer wasn’t taken out of context. The real context is that she is in over her head. And if she can’t understand a simple question and answer it, we’re also in deep trouble.
There’s one more crowning example of Napolitano’s extreme incompetence. In her March 2009 report on terrorism, she emphasized the dangers of returning servicemen teaming up with right-wing extremists to pose a terror threat. If that’s where she sees the main source of terrorism, she is beyond hopeless and clueless.
Not to be outdone in the contest to see who is most incompetent in the Obama administration, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs did his part. When asked why wasn’t the name checked on the Watch List (or so-called No-Fly List), he said that was too difficult as there were 500,000 names on the list. Apparently, Mr. Gibbs hasn’t heard of the computer, which could do that check in seconds or less. Another Obama aide said that the Christmas terrorist did not belong on the No Fly List, but in his December 29, 2009 statement Obama reversed that conclusion. Perhaps Obama will need a “Retraction Czar” to spend full time correcting and retracting statements of Obama administration spokesmen.
Other Obama aides showed their incompetence. The Obama staff waited three hours to even tell him about the Christmas terrorist incident. As one pundit pointed out, the staff woke him up immediately to tell him he won the Nobel Prize for Peace. But a terror threat to the homeland was apparently much less important and urgent than that.
And then there is the top man, also a strong contender in the who-is-the-most-incompetent contest. During Katrina, Obama criticized Bush for not speaking to the issues early and often. But what did Obama do after the Christmas terror incident? He waited three days to speak. And then what he said again put on display the incompetence of the Obama administration. For example, he said that everything was being done to keep America safe. That’s not true, as the terrorist is being treated as a common criminal and given all the rights of an American citizen including access to a lawyer. He should be treated as an enemy combatant and be subjected to tough questioning by the CIA, FBI, and other law enforcement agencies. This terrorist should be tried by a military commission as an enemy combatant, and not give the full rights of a citizen. We should immediately be seeking information about the terrorist’s chain of command, who else is involved, and what other attacks may be on the way. We have saved lives by questioning other enemy combatants, but the Obama administration doesn’t even know this is a war against Islamic terrorism, and is treating the terrorist as a common criminal, thus sacrificing our ability to get needed intelligence information from him. This demonstrates Obama isn’t keeping us safe, but is instead subjecting us to unnecessary dangers.
Obama’s other statements also reflected his administration’s incompetence when it comes to the war against Islamic terrorism. He described this Christmas-day terrorist as an “isolated extremist.” There is nothing isolated about this extremist, who contrary to Obama’s distorted language is best described as a terrorist and not as an extremist. The terrorist received all kinds of technical advice and help in obtaining and using the explosive material, PETN. He received training abroad. He even told the FBI, according to ABC, that there are many other extremists in Yemen ready to strike the U.S. He may have tried to carry out the attack itself as a lone wolf, but he is part of a massive Islamic terrorist network lined to al Qaeda and that network has long been waging war against the U.S. and the free world…and Obama and his administration don’t even know what we’re up against.
I’d add one other example from Obama’s pathetic speech. He said, “As the plane made its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport, a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body, setting off a fire.” Give me a break, Mr. President, and cut the “allegedly.” You should also cut calling him a “suspect.” You’re not a libel lawyer playing it safe for some media outlet; you’re not a law professor anymore; you’re supposed to be the leader of the U.S. and the free world summoning us to battle in the war on terror. Yet, when called to act like a leader, he acted more like a schoolboy going through the motions of an assignment, without vision or passion. As Charles Hurt of the New York Daily News put it, “Unaided by his trusty TelePromptTers, the president read through his statement like a schoolkid dutifully treading through his book report.” After the speech, Obama was so focused on terrorism and so determined to protect America that he went back to his golf cart and played another round.
In fact, he apparently found addressing this terror threat so boring and unimportant that he delegated all initial responses to his various subordinates and aides, and could not summon his own interest for three days. Then he gave a relatively short statement and did not take questions.
Another feature of his speech on the Christmas terrorist is his inability to identify the nature of those at war with America – Islamic terrorists. He uses the term “extremist” and when you can’t identify your enemy, you are not in a position to fight him. Obama does all kinds of verbal gyrations and back flips to avoid addressing the reality of Islamic terrorism. Obama is unable to call these enemies by their right name – Islamic terrorists.
And needless to say, the White House issued the usual lame excuses for Obama’s three-day silence. Obama had to wait a few days to be sure of the facts. One of his press spokesmen said, “After having a chance to thoroughly review where we were at the end of the weekend, he decided to address the American people.” Napolitano and Gibbs could figure out what was going on right away, but it took the president three days. Another measure of his incompetence is that it took him four days to figure out there was a “systemic failure” of security. That was obvious virtually from the outset and certainly long before four days had elapsed.
Unfortunately, this incompetence is part of a larger pattern and seems to dominate the Obama administration actions. Attorney General Eric Holder is another case study in incompetence at the highest levels of government. He moved the trials of terrorists to New York City without even consulting the Mayor of New York or the New York City Police Commissioner. It’s hard to imagine a more elementary blunder of management or leadership. Then when he went before Congress to explain his decision, he demonstrated more incompetence. He was asked for the precedent of giving enemy combatants access to our court system and full constitutional rights. He said he’d have to think about it, but then Senator Lindsay Graham (Republican-South Carolina) gave him the answer. There is no precedent. But the fact that Holder made the decision without figuring out the precedents or lack thereof suggests incompetence in Holder’s understanding of the law as well as in the management of the office of the attorney general.
All of the Obama illustrations of incompetence are too extensive to be cataloged here. But another one that is instructive is the decision to close Guantanamo in 2009. It was made with unseemly haste, without understanding or a sound rationale, and now is blowing up on the Obama administration. The mistake is made all the more egregious by the fact that some of the Guantanamo detainees have already been sent to Yemen and more were scheduled to go, when Yemen’s position as a haven for al Qaeda become ever more evident after the Christmas day terrorist came on the scene, having been trained in Yemen.
I’ve said before when you elect an untested, unvetted radical socialist leftist who hates America as president, you’re in for trouble. I also said when you elect a president who has closely associated with racists, bigots, America-haters and even terrorists, you’re in for trouble. I might add when you elect an incompetent, you’re also in for trouble. And that is exactly where we are now. Here are a few suggestions for Obama to reverse the ooze of incompetence from the White House:
• Kill the idea of closing Guantanamo. Transferring these enemy combatants to the U.S. will only create unacceptable security and legal problems.
• Kill the idea of trying some of the enemy combatants in New York City. Again, this is nothing but a security and legal catastrophe in the making.
• Kill the August 10, 2010 deadline for getting U.S. troops out of Iraq. We should withdraw them at the right time, and not on schedule to please Obama’s radical pacifist surrender-now base.
• Stop bootlicking our enemies and kicking our allies.
• Kill Obamacare, and go back to the drawing board for a proposal that will fix only the highest priority problems (the uninsured and cost control) and that will not bankrupt the country. Also kill cap and trade, another insane proposal.
• Recognize we are at war with Islamic terrorism, and start saying so, instead of using euphemisms apparently thought to make the war go away. As indicated Obama has finally said we’re at war, but failed to name our enemy. As usual, his actions do not match his rhetoric.
• Fire Secretary Napolitano and Attorney General Holder, two incompetents clearly in over their head.
• Finally, Obama should do something good for America – resign from the presidency.
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, professor at the Wharton School, and
Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National
Academy of Sciences and is a board member of the Center for Safe Medication Use. He is an adjunct
professor of insurance and information science and technology at Cabrini College. You can write Herb
at POB 7301,St. Davids, PA e-mail him at hdenenberg@aol.com or reach him at his two Web sites:
thedenrep_archive.org or denenbergsdump.org