ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

It’s a new year and we are still at war.

That’s right, we are in a war whether you like the word “WAR” or not. I sure don’t. I like flowers blooming freely and children playing and people sharing baked goods while laughing about the silly behavior of their adorable pets.

War sucks. But, we’re in one. It’s a trickier war than we’re historically used to and the people we are fighting don’t wear uniforms and subscribe to the Geneva Convention rules. In fact, the only rules they subscribe to are the ones set forth in the Koran and whatever terrorist organization they may belong to. These are sophisticated, organized, and incredibly well funded people. They will go to great lengths to inflict the maximum damage possible to you, to us, to the U.S. and the West.

Look, let’s just forget politics. This is not a political matter. This bit is not a critique of President Obama. This is about reality. Brass tacks. Looking in the mirror and saying: “Something is not working here.”

Our enemies took a young Nigerian, trained him in Yemen, and sent him through Amsterdam with a complex chemical explosive device so that he could take down a plane on Christmas Day. That’s war.

Our bureaucracy is so tied up in politically correct knots that the terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been on the terrorist watch list for two (2) years and our embassy still issued the guy a VISA. Not only that; his own father, a prominent and highly respected Nigerian banker, warned the U.S. Embassy about his son due to his radical beliefs. Well, according to our embassy, there was not “enough negative information” on Abdulmutallab to preclude him from getting a visa.

Isn’t being ON THE TERRORIST WATCHLIST negative enough? Is it too much to ask our government to prevent these people from coming into the country? Am I a fringe lunatic for posing this question? Am I an insane right-winger for asking why it took the leader of the free world 3 days to come up with a verbal response to a terrorist attack on our country?

Obama & Co. is not facing the facts and the Administration’s strategies are simply not realistic. It’s getting ridiculous out there. We are not safe and the Obama Administration has diminished our security both in practice and in psychology.

In practice, it’s fairly obvious: his approach to counterterrorism is less aggressive than the times necessitate. Most importantly, by changing the language and tone on terrorism, team Obama has given a lot of Americans a false sense of security – that terrorism isn’t really such a big problem. This has lowered peoples’ sense of vigilance nationwide.

I notice it right here in New York especially because I see so many people in the course of a day. In just a year, behavior has changed. On the subways, trains and buses people are more inward than ever before and less aware of their surroundings. I’m hardly a paranoid person but I know it is just a matter of time before Al Queda or some other group seeks to terrorize New York City by setting off explosives during rush hour. The only reason they haven’t been successful in doing so already is because of the exemplary work of the NYPD in thwarting numerous attempted attacks. And believe me, there have been a significant number of them. Since 9/11, there have been 31 attempted terrorist attacks that were stopped either in the planning or operational stages in major cities across the U.S. A number of those were right here in New York City.

For the last several years, the expression here was: “If you see something, say something.” That attitude has evaporated. The signs that reminded us of this have all but disappeared. People think terrorism is a 2001 problem, a Bush Administration “issue” and a blown-out-of-proportion battle call that led to the violation of our civil liberties….

Right. (By the way, I’m still waiting for that list of rights and liberties Bush, Cheney et al stripped us of.)

The second practical issue with Obama's handling of our counter-terrorism effort is in dealing with the scumbags we have already caught. It is illogical and foolish to bring terrorists to trial in American courts.

9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has clearly stated that he wants to plead guilty to a military tribunal and receive the death penalty. He has already said that and explained his planning of the attacks. The idea that Attorney General Holder is trying to further, that putting KSM in a civilian court would yield better results or be more guaranteed a conviction, is outrageous. Furthermore, people who plead guilty don't get a trial AFTER they've pleaded guilty even in civilian court. Imagine, you commit a crime, you say "OK, I did it." Then they tell you: "Yeah, well sorry, we're going have a long, drawn out, public trial anyway..."

It's for show.

Why do we still use military tribunals for the men who attacked the Cole and other kinds of terrorist attacks but if you are responsible for slaughtering passengers on an airplane with box cutters and ramming planes into the World Trade Center, killing thousands of innocents in sovereign U.S. territory, you are treated like an American citizen and receive vastly greater protections and more opportunities to spew your ideology in front of cameras than you would have if you had done the same thing in the Persian Gulf?

Again, it's irrational. It's obvious, these decisions are ill conceived.

Now, psychologically, the practices and attitudes of the Obama Administration have been detrimental in far worse ways. The terrorists, the ones we are unfortunately at war with, have been reinvigorated by America’s new approach.

Think about it. They consider themselves at war with us. That’s what they call it; war. These are serious people who are in the war to end all wars and they don’t care about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They have dedicated their existence to killing you and me. But, we hesitate to fully acknowledge this. Instead, our leaders publicly attack our own law enforcement for doing their jobs and the mainstream media makes our honorable military look like a circus of heartless animals due to the stupid behavior of no more than a handful of soldiers out of nearly two million. Then you have representatives like Pelosi chiming in with her inane and moronic backpedaling.

Somewhere, in a cave, an asshole is laughing. Hard.

We have gone soft in the last year and, to top it off, we have gone to great lengths to advertise that fact. We have taken on the attitude that, if we’re really “fair” with these people, they’ll change their minds and just be nice to us. The stark reality is that we’re dealing with people who only understand force. It’s like trying to talk a raging fire out of burning you to a crisp. Either you extinguish the fire or you die. We are at odds with a culture and a society that, in its fundamental state, justifies violent riots in response to minor offenses, Muslim men killing their sisters and daughters in the name of so-called family "honor”, and the murder of Christians and Jewish “non-believers". They stone teenage rape victims to death for "adultery” and we’re going to reason with them?

Remember what Bin Laden said? He said the U.S. was a paper tiger, that we were weak, that we had no backbone. We’re proving him right.

You can’t sweet talk people who are willing to kill for ideological reasons. You can’t rehabilitate and politic a group of individuals who will proudly give their lives for the sheer glory of taking yours. A bureaucracy cannot solve the problems of violence and war. No matter the level of intellect. No matter the virtue of intention.

What our Administration is trying to do amounts to bringing a piece of paper to a gunfight. When the bad guys come to slit our throats, we offer up daisies.

How prescient.

Ask yourself; have the Iranians been deterred by Obama’s carefully formulated ovations to sit down and talk? No, they have grown their nuclear program greatly and have developed delivery capability. In addition, they have increased funding for terrorism across the Middle East and Asia, rigged a national election in order to maintain power and put down protests by killing their own citizens.

Has Obama slowed the development of nuclear weapons in North Korea or even improved relations with that country? No, the North Koreans have spent the last year building nuclear weapons and missiles unchecked with no signs of slowing down.

Chavez, down in Venezuela, is having a grand old time. He considers Obama a joke. His reign of repression, media control and unanswered criticism of the U.S. has only blossomed these last 12 months.

So, between Iran, China, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, and the biggest fascist ego in South America we have absolutely zero traction. What we do have is spin, transparent public relations and what amounts to political marketing. No results or so much as a path toward any results. Even the French have accused us of being soft on Iran. The FRENCH!!

I don’t know how many of you know this but our President recently signed an Executive Order releasing Interpol from all U.S. constraints. Interpol includes members such as Algeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Qatar, Oman, Bangladesh, Morocco, Egypt, Libya, Iran and Syria. Those member states will now have access to information and legalities that we as Americans have. This could lead to investigations by Interpol into American officials in the United States and the transfer of information to dangerous sources via corrupt foreign officials. Why would the President of our country give such extensive legal protection to an international police force? And why, please tell me, has it not been covered in the news at all? It’s important. It’s pertinent information. Yet, it was kept incredibly quiet. The double standards of the mainstream media would be funny if not so pathetic.

It appears that Obama is forfeiting and devaluing our civil liberties rather than taking them away. But that’s what this is at the end of the day, isn’t it? We are leveling the “justice” playing field. We are reading Miranda rights to enemy combatants and war criminals as if we’re arresting someone for shoplifting. We are placing foreign terrorists in our system and offering them the same protections under the law as you and I have. Why is a Nigerian terrorist who attempts to blow up a plane in Federal Airspace getting three squares, a bed and all of the benefits of our justice system? Because Attorney General Eric Holder, acting on behalf of the Administration, believes it’s not fair otherwise.

In the last year we have encouraged the terrorists, tinkered dangerously with the U.S. justice system, inflicted enormous damage on our own protectors, and made a laughing stock out of America’s political prowess across the globe.

Happy 2010. The war continues.