What Happens When You Pretend You Are Not At War

Sorry for the long break between posts. Holidays got the best of me. In the meantime, our enemies have been busy.

By now, most know about the attempted terror attack on Christmas Day. And by now everyone realizes that this was such a colossal blunder it is almost unbelievable. I say almost because those of us that understand that the more government there is, the more chance for bureaucracy and inefficiency to prevent any meaningful results from being realized, understand that this attack was sadly inevitable.

Our security apparatus is simply not able to handle the number of possible threats coming at them. And what is the main reason for this? We are afraid to focus our efforts on only the people we think fit a terrorist profile. We are afraid of that word "profiling." There are racial and political overtones to that word that we dare not confront.

No, instead, we try to apply new rules to every single traveller whether they are some 80 year old grandmother or a young muslim male. The problem is we simply do not have the resources to do an effective job against every single person. We have to focus our efforts. If there are political correctness issues with this, so be it. The point is to stop another attack from occuring.

Until we profile and screen for people that would more likely be terrorist, we are going to continue to miss obvious would-be terrorist like this guy on the flight to Detroit. Remember, he was a muslim man who had traveled to Yemen (a known hot-bed of Al Qaeeda activity), who was alrady on a watch list, whose own father reported to the US embassy, and who bought a one way ticket with cash at the last second.

If those are not the right types or amounts of warning signs, I don't know what else our security people need in order to step in and do their jobs.

But, again, our country and our leaders do not want to recognize that we are all at war. We want to pretend that the war is over there in dark corners of the rest of the world. We want to pretend that if we are nicer to people in the world then the terrorists will not want attack us anymore. In truth, we want to pretend that we are invincible and that our lifestyles of mindless consumerism will never be threatened or changed or ever come to an end.

And this is exactly what our current President is putting forth - that we are not at war with these people. That the terrorists are merely common criminals that deserve lawyers and civilian trials. That he and he alone can try to talk with Iran and North Korea and others who want to do the world harm and that he and he alone can make them see the errors of their ways. It is his approach to the continuing battle with radical Islam that will only lead to more attacks and more pain in the near future.

The enemy has come to the conclusion that our leader is weak and that America is again a sift target. We lack the will to fight the way this fight requires. And until Americans decide that enough is enough and that Muslims must reform themselves and police their own radicals in their midst, we will not tolerate the violence and the threats and th failed states and all the rest of the moral corruption that breeds Islamic terrorism.

Sadly, it will probably take more attacks and cost more American lives before we as a people wake up and demand that our leaders actually lead in this fight.

Just know this - that leadership will not come when our President gets the news of the Detroit attack and proceeds to head to the gym and then play another round of golf. That is an unserious approach. That is a dangerous approach.

But that is what happens when you pretend you are not at war.