Americans aren’t feeling safer these days:
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 79% of U.S. voters now think it is likely there will be another terrorist attack in the United States in the next year. That’s a 30-point jump from the end of August when just 49% of Americans felt that way.
Didn’t they hear? We’re closing Guantanamo, giving KSM a civil trial, stopping enhanced interrogation techniques and re-investigating the CIA. All that and yet 70 percent think we’re going to be hit again.
Meanwhile, three days after the Christmas Day bombing was thwarted by a combination of luck and alert passengers, the Saudi arm of al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack. And Obama? Oh, yes, he, as the New York Times indelicately put it, “emerged from seclusion“ to tell us he’s being briefed, everyone should be “vigilant but confident” (Who comes up with this stuff?) and that he really gets it that there are terrorists in a bunch of places who want to kill us. Sounding oddly like OJ Simpson, he vowed, “We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable.” (Yes, it’s apparently just a giant manhunt for the culprits, in the parlance of the criminal-justice perspective to which the administration clings so dearly.) He took no questions. After all, someone might ask a sticky one, such as “Why Janet Napolitano is still working for you?” or “Why did you think it advisable to release Guantanamo detainees to Yemen?”
Even the Times reporter could not conceal his disdain for the president’s shabby handing of the terror attack:
Pictures of passengers enduring tougher security screening at the airport were juxtaposed against images of the president soaking in the sun and surf of this tropical getaway. Mr. Obama, who put on a suit though no tie for his statement Monday, has ordered a review of the two major planks of the aviation security system — watch lists and detection equipment at air — port checkpoints. Some members of Congress urgently questioned why, more than eight years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, security measures could not keep makeshift bombs off airliners.
This eerily brings to mind Obama’s campaign hideout when Russia invaded Georgia. For days he remained secluded then too, only to emerge from the palm trees when his then-opponent John McCain had issued multiple statements. But Obama is president now and the public is increasingly concerned about his ability to protect them. We really could use a commander in chief who understands the nature of the enemy and who can do better than a belated statement days after the third domestic terror attack of his presidency.
