The Buck Stops Here? What Buck?

posted at 10:10 am on January 8, 2010 by Howard Portnoy
[ Homeland Security ]   

First Barack Obama wanted to be seen as an incarnation of Abraham Lincoln and FDR rolled into one. Now he is channeling Harry Truman, having lifted one of Truman’s most notable lines in his latest speech on the botched Christmas Day terrorist attack, proclaiming that “the buck stops here.”

Presumably, the comment was supposed to make Americans feel all warm and cuddly inside, knowing that their leader is a man of principles—someone who is willing to take his medicine when the system goes down on his watch. That view might not ring quite so hollow if Obama hadn’t spent every day of his administration previous to this one whining about the “mess he inherited” and blaming FOX News Channel or certain pollsters for his falling approval ratings.

But whether Obama’s self-recrimination is credible is really beside the point. The more important issue about the sentiment is what does he mean by it? In the same speech, Obama allowed as how “America’s first line of defense is timely, accurate intelligence that is shared, integrated, analyzed, and acted upon quickly and effectively.” But taking quick and decisive action in the face of accurate intelligence is precisely the opposite of he ordered done when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was seized by authorities. Rather than grill the Nigerian for information on who had trained him, where he had acquired the explosive materials used in the would-be attack, and whether, where, and when other attacks were imminent, Obama’s security team read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights and allowed him to lawyer up.

Obama also gave assurances in his speech—or at least the impression thereof—that he understood the enemy we as a nation are up against. He described al Qaeda as “a far-reaching network of violence and hatred … that offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death … while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress.” As Charles Krauthammer has noted, this views is disingenuous for many reasons. Chief among these is that al Qaeda is not out for justice or progress. On the contrary, they deplore both, which is what they despise the West. When Osama bin Laden or other Islamofascist leaders speak, they wax nostalgic about a worldwide caliphate; they pine for the glory that was Andalusia, the Latinized version of the name Al-Andalus that Muslims gave Spain in the Middle Ages, when the entire Iberian peninsula was under Islamic control.

A second problem with Obama’s statement is his identity of al Qaeda as the enemy. Indeed al Qaeda is an enemy and perhaps a prominent one. But they are not alone in the desire to bring death and destruction to the West. There are countless other sects and splinter groups dedicated to the same fanatic ideology, which is religious in nature. In short, we are at war with worldwide jihadism. Obama’s continuing to go out of his way to excuse Islam, as he did again in this speech, is to dismiss the problem, which is squarely grounded in Islamic doctrine.

Ultimately, this speech, like virtually every other one Obama has given, reveals a man who is more interested in appearances than he is in substance. The problem we as a nation face going forward with Barack Obama as our leader is that when you peel away the layers of fluff and bravado, there may be little inside.

Cross-posted at Manhattan Conservative Examiner

Blowback