A History of Failure

Barack Obama is discovering new similarities with George W. Bush. Not yet one full year in office and the threat of terrorism has become the number one subject of his administration, diverting him from those projects he wished would become the hallmarks of his presidency. Shocking lapses in national security have become apparent. He inherited the apparatus from his predecessor, but the people will hold a sitting president responsible if anything goes wrong. And the opposition propagandists are doing everything they can to blame him and the policies of prior Democratic presidents. Bush was never blamed for the neglect that made it possible for al-Qaeda to destroy the World Trade Center with hijacked airliners because Republicans assured everyone that the real causes were to be found in Clinton administration policies. And so it goes with Obama as well.

Similarly, the main reasons a Nigerian was able to board an airplane carrying explosives are to be found in past administrations. As in 2001, U.S. authorities had both ample warning of an imminent attack and clues as to the identity of the perpetrators. Again, the information lay on the desks of several different governmental and security agencies, but it wasn’t put together quickly enough. The 9/11 Commission report recommended improving information sharing techniques. Bush and Vice President Cheney responded by creating a mammoth bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security — a virtually uncontrollable apparatus because of its huge size (more than 200,000 employees). It was designed to oversee 16 separate intelligence agencies. Despite this setup, the same mistakes happened yet again. Cheney blames President Obama, maintaining that his policy of trying to reconcile with the Muslim world and negotiating with terrorists — as well as planning to close Guantanamo — all contributed to America lowering its guard.

The Republicans don’t want to be reminded that Bush also favored closing Guantanamo or that the Bush administration deemed two Saudi Guantanamo prisoners to be harmless and sent them back to Saudi Arabia in 2007 — where they promptly fled to Yemen, joined al-Qaeda and masterminded the attack on the Detroit-bound Delta flight. Those blaming the lack of body scan imaging technology to find concealed explosives carried by passengers also need look no further than Bush-Cheney, who rejected funding and implementation of the technology when they were in office.

Of course, a completely new carelessness reared its head this time. If it’s true that the perpetrator bought a one-way ticket and flew from Africa via Europe to the United States with no luggage, that in itself should have raised the alarm and merited special scrutiny — both at his departure from Nigeria and during his flight change in Amsterdam. But it’s human nature that attention to detail decreases if nothing noteworthy happens for a while.

Obama can’t complain. He was fully aware that Republicans were waiting for such an opportunity to prove their cliché that Democrats were soft on national defense. Was Obama wise in spending the first three days after the attack silently on vacation in Hawaii? And then announce an action plan on New Year’s Eve, instead of waiting for the results of his crisis summit with the intelligence agencies? He was twice lucky on this occasion: there were no fatalities, and the attempted attack got everyone’s attention. Now, the entire security apparatus must again be examined closely and changes must be made that will prevent future such lapses in both America and Europe. The foundations for security (or insecurity) under the next government are ready to be laid down.