Obama’s response to terrorist attack is troubling

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online.  It’s called, “Obama’s response to terrorist attack is troubling.”  Here’s a part:

The first thing it tells us is that the Obama administration’s initial reaction to a terrorist attack on in American air space is to go into a defensive political posture to try to prevent it from looking bad. This is much the same reaction we saw after the terrorist attack at Fort Hood. The Obama Administration spent great efforts to downplay the event and assure everyone that they didn’t screw up.

   That is why Napolitano tried to immediately defend “the system” as working and downplay the possibility that it was part of a larger plot. When that position became indefensible, she and Obama admitted vague failures in “the system” and promised a review. Only when it was obvious to everyone on the planet that this was terrorist attack did the administration admit a larger plot, promise another review and to work on fixes for “the system.” Instead of showing any leadership, the Obama Administration has let events drag them along as they fight off a rear-guar political battle.

   The second thing all of this teaches us is that our government has fully reverted back to President Clinton administration’s stance of treating terrorism as a matter of law enforcement. Abdulmutallab was immediately Mirandized and taken into federal custody. He has a lawyer and is being granted the full protections of the U.S. States Constitution even though he is not an American and tried to commit a terrorist act on our nation.

   One can also see the change in stance in the language of the administration. Obama called Abdulmutallab the “suspect” who “allegedly” tried to ignite a bomb. He sounds more like a county district attorney giving a press conference about a burglary suspect than the POTUS talking about a terrorist.

   This treatment of terrorists has real world consequences. For example, now that we know that Abdulmutallab was trained and supplied by Al-Qaeda in Yemen, what can we do about it? He has a 5th Amendment right not to incriminate himself. The United States might have to grant him immunity and release him in order to coerce information about the larger terrorist infrastructure out of him.

   By treating him as a criminal instead of a terrorist, the Obama administration has seriously hampered our ability to fight the larger terrorist network.