These Aren't Tribbles You're Dealing With, Mr. President

To paraphrase Dinah Washington, "what a difference a year makes." A year ago, the MSM sounded like a church choir praising the name of The One. Washington DC was preparing for the entrance of the messiah, come unto his temple. The air (and the airwaves) were filled with the hymns of hope and change, and America was about to experience a "fundamental change." Now, even the most groveling of Obama acolytes are discovering that their god has feet of clay.

On December 30, swooning Obamist Maureen Dowd of The New York Times finally joined the world of reality after the tepid and confused response of The One to the attempted Christmas terrorist attack aboard a Northwest Airlines jet preparing to land in Detroit. She thought it was bad enough that the president took three days to get off the golf course to make a full statement about the attempted murder of the passengers on the plane as well as the possible deaths of hundreds more on the ground. But even this regular worshiper found the statement which did finally come to be inadequate, overly-academic, lacking in any action plan, mushy, and unclear.

After the obligatory attacks on Bush and Cheney, Dowd goes on to say that things haven't gotten any better. In fact, she opines, they may even have gotten worse. She recognizes how many technological advances have been made since 9-11, and how almost none of them have been used at the airports. She describes the "failure to capitalize on snazzy new technology while agencies thumb through printouts and continue their old turf wars. [As a result of Obama's initial response to the attempted attack], instead of modernity, we have airports where security is so retro that taking away pillows and blankies and bathroom breaks counts as a great leap forward."

She actually has come to realize how serious this problem has become. "I thought our guard might be down because of the holiday; now I realize our guard is down every day." Welcome to the wonderful world of terrorist reality, Mo. Better late than never. She goes on to say: “If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in al-Qaida sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch?”

"Before he left for vacation, Obama tried to shed his Spock mien and juice up the empathy quotient on jobs." Now here are the words I never expected to hear from Dowd: "But in his usual inspiring/listless cycle, he once more appeared chilly in his response to the chilling episode on Flight 253, issuing bulletins through his press secretary and hitting the links. At least you have to seem concerned." We've been taking note of Obama's half-human responses to worldwide diplomacy and terrorism from the get-go. But if Dowd has finally decided to admit what she likely already knew, however reluctantly, I'll take what I can get.

After the president's formal statement, in which he actually spoke for himself instead of through surrogates, Dowd concluded: "In his detached way, Spock was letting us know that our besieged starship was not speeding into a safer new future, and that we still have to be scared. Heck of a job, Barry." Like a puppy who barks, and scares himself, I'm sure Dowd will do some backtracking on her criticism over the next few days, but it was refreshing, even if it was only temporary.

By way of contrast, I suppose that makes Bush more like Captain Kirk. Not as brilliant as Spock, but immediately capable of distinguishing friend from foe, and capable of deciding on a course without agonizing over all the possible alternatives and choosing the one least likely to offend the enemy. In reality, Bush was very determined, but still lacking in the will to identify the real enemy--radical Islam. Instead, we got the "war on terror" without a clear message as to who the terrorists are, and the common belief they share. So we dithered a bit while the starship was under attack, then picked specific targets without using our full armament against the Klingon/Islamofascist empire and its quest for universal domination by force.

Also in reality, Obama sounds like Spock with that droning, unemotional way of addressing every issue from irritating small asteroids to serious attacks on the starship. But he has none of Spock's intelligence, or at least very little of it. Spock intellectualized everything, then drew a conclusion. Obama has his agenda already decided, then pseudo-intellectualizes it in order to make the attack fit into his pre-established conclusions. The thinking never changes, never analyzes, but merely shifts the droning speech to sound as if it's something well thought-out.

As a result of his non-decision decisions, the terrorists are further emboldened. Big cities wonder what will hit them next. New York City's bustling Times Square was briefly evacuated near the Conde-Nast building because of an unattended van, with windows blocked out by plastic bags, that was parked at the same location for two days in the area (the early reports said "tinted windows"). The van had a placard with the name of a nonexistent law enforcement agency on the dashboard, and no license plates. It sounded too much like the van that launched the first World Trade Center attack to be ignored. Fortunately, it turned out to be a false alarm, or at least so we're told. Yet the police and parking authorities took no action until a civilian reported the suspicious vehicle. Sadly, the parking officers had never checked the phony police-type placard nor had they called in the temporary paper license (unlike permanent registration, temporary licenses can't be scanned for ownership).

The New York Daily News, a reliably moderate/liberal publication said "The attempt to blow Northwest Airlines Flight 253 out of the air was planned as an attack on the United States and very nearly succeeded in accomplishing that horrific goal. The moment demanded inspiring, decisive presidential leadership. America waited four days for a glimmer. What the public was left with was a never-to-be-repeated case study in crisis mismanagement. It's time to get a grip, Mr. President. Obama's description of Abdulmutallab as an 'isolated extremist' was remarkable and disturbing. This radicalized young Nigerian is nothing of the sort. He operated, in fact, as an Al Qaeda-recruited, Al Qaeda-supplied, Al Qaeda-directed foot soldier--as, to put it directly, an enemy combatant, and not as the criminal 'suspect' of Obama's description."

The conservative Washington Times didn't have to twist itself into knots to criticize Obama's lack of leadership and understanding of the situation. It has been pointing out this serious lack of spine and intellect from the beginning of the Obama ascendancy. In an editorial, it described the Obama style of leadership as "the pooh-pooh presidency." I would have prefered "poo-poo" presidency, but that misses the point the publication was making. "When Mr. Obama finally did address the American people about the attempted terror attack three days later, it wasn't to rally a people under attack or to assure the nation he was up to the challenge of defending the United States, it was to pooh-pooh the attack. He blamed the whole thing on an 'isolated extremist.' Mr. Obama bravely called on the American people to join him in continuing to underestimate the size of the problem."

The Times concluded with: "While the president continued to play golf, basketball and work out in an island paradise during the Detroit terror aftermath, many in the media excused Mr. Obama for blowing them off. After all, reporters following the president are happy not to be sweating it out in Crawford, Texas anymore."

Kirk/Bush may have followed his advisers' overly cautious need to avoid offending the Muslim world, but Bush himself had no doubts about who the real enemy was, and is. He may have used the wrong words, and made blunders in how he launched and continued the counter-attacks, but there was no doubt he was going after the right enemy. Spock/Obama has continued his intellectualized maunderings and meanderings at the expense of the necessary identification of the true enemy while seeking the least offensive counter-measures. Mr. Wannabe Spock, that will get a whole lot of us killed.