President Barack Obama asserted on Tuesday the government had enough information to foil the attempted bombing on a Christmas Day airline flight but intelligence agencies "failed to connect those dots" and left nearly 300 passengers and crew in peril.
Obama called that unacceptable. "I will not tolerate it," he said.
After a year of our president reaching out to the Islamic world, hoping his unique background would bridge the gap between Moslems drawn to jihad and America, the Christmas Day bomber incident was a rebuke to the idea that George W. Bush caused jihadis to hate America. The jihadis hate Obama's America, too. Which means the jihadis hate America. That might be the last dot the administration needed to really wage war.
After eleven months of basking in the glow of being President Obama, putative leader of the world who happened to have an office in the White House, am I seeing too much in thinking that President Obama realizes, perhaps for the first time, that he is the American President? That is, that he represents and leads our country, built on our history, and that enemies and friends will not swoon over him and do his bidding from the force of his biography? Adding that dot to the others we've connected, will the president really feel in his bones that we--with him leading us--are at war? He came very close, as the POTUS, to being compelled to give a speech about the loss of 300 lives in the air over Detroit and who knows how many on the ground.
We shall see. Will the president try the terrorist as a criminal as it appears now, or treat him as an unlawful combatant who can be interrogated for information? Will we still try KSM in New York? Will we still seek to release detainees from Yemen and close Guantanamo? His actions will show whether he has really connected all the dots of the Christmas Day bombing attempt.
As I've written, I don't blame President Obama for attackers penetrating our defenses. Stuff happens. As he announced, we need to fix the demonstrated gaps. But enemies will find new gaps.
All I ask is that our president understand that we are at war, and act like it.
UPDATE: I didn't hear the president's remarks. But I'm being too optimistic about the ability of the president to process the reality of the situation. Still, perhaps baby steps were made last night.
UPDATE: More on the ability to learn from experience.
