On the first day of Christmas, we were attacked.
On the second day of Christmas, the enemy combatant who had been dispatched from Yemen to attack us—who boarded a plane to Detroit with a valid multiple-entry visa despite our having been warned about him by his father, despite his having spent months with an al Qaeda leader in Yemen who was closely monitored by U.S. intelligence, and despite his buying a one-way ticket with cash and boarding without luggage—was arraigned before a judge, provided with a lawyer, and informed of his right to remain silent. The Transportation Security Administration ordered that airplane passengers remain seated for the final hour of all flights. President Obama remained silent.
On the third day of Christmas, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs went on the Sunday talk shows to assure Americans that “the system worked.”
On the fourth day of Christmas, the president interrupted his vacation in Hawaii to “assure” the American people that, basically, all was well: “An alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.”
On the fifth day of Christmas, the president came off the golf course to speak again. He now told us of some “serious concerns” that had been raised by the Christmas day incident—it turned out a “systemic failure” had occurred that allowed for a “potential catastrophic breach of security.”
On the sixth day of Christmas, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center continued the ski vacation he had left for the day after Christmas, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency continued to enjoy his holiday on the West Coast.
On the seventh day of Christmas, the White House issued a statement that the president had spoken that morning with his two nonvacationing terrorism advisers, Napolitano and Deputy Assistant to the President John Brennan, and that he had called a meeting for Tuesday when everyone was back in Washington.
On the eighth day of Christmas, everyone celebrated the New Year.
On the ninth day of Christmas, the president told us that the extremist wasn’t isolated, after all. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had “trained,” “equipped,” and “directed” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to attack the United States.
On the tenth day of Christmas, John Brennan was a guest on all the Sunday news talk shows. He explained that Abdulmutallab “received training” at one of several terror training camps in Yemen and that “he was clearly directed to carry out this attack [by] al Qaeda, the senior leadership there. This is something that we’re very concerned about. We’re concerned that they may be, in fact, trying to get other operatives, non-Yemenis and others, to train inside of Yemen, to send to the West.”
Brennan nonetheless defended treating Abdulmutallab as a criminal suspect, saying we could plea bargain with the terrorist in return for information he might have about Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and about other attackers who might be on the way. Brennan also reiterated the Obama administration’s intention to continue paroling terror detainees to Yemen as part of the Obama quest to close Guantánamo.
On the eleventh day of Christmas, President Obama arrived back in Washington.
On the twelfth day of Christmas, the State Department announced that Abdulmutallab’s visa had been revoked.
On the feast of the Epiphany, Obama’s national security adviser told USA Today that Americans would feel “a certain shock” when they saw the report that was to be released the next day.
And Americans did feel “a certain shock”—not so much from the report as from Napolitano’s profession of surprise at al Qaeda’s “tactic of using an individual to foment an attack.” Meanwhile, Brennan expressed alarm about cooperation between Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and about the fact that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was “actually launching individuals here.”
So, two weeks after the Christmas attack, the Obama administration may finally have awakened to the fact that we are facing an ongoing threat from a sophisticated global terror group with at least two capable and connected nodes, in Pakistan/Afghanistan and in Yemen. And that there are people being trained we probably don’t know about, in places we may not have yet discovered, to attack the United States of America. And they don’t take Christmas vacations.
We presume the Obama administration’s Christmas vacation is over. It would be good if they also abandoned their yearlong attempt to take a holiday from history.
—William Kristol
