When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to
detonate an explosive aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on
Christmas Day, liberals were quick to warn against the clear and
present danger.
It wasn’t the threat of al Qaeda-trained bombers blowing up
Detroit-bound planes that concerned them. Rather, liberals feared
that Americans might blame the Obama administration for failing
to protect them from terrorists or — perhaps even worse —
demand action against the violent extremists who want to kill us
all.
Liberals believe most of their fellow citizens are
benighted troglodytes, so there was also the frightening
possibility of a xenophobic hate-crime backlash. Monitoring one
reliable barometer of elite sentiment,
Andrew Breitbart remarked: “Based upon my NPR listening
sessions, I am fearful that reactionary Americans are going to go
on a rampage against Nigerians tomorrow.”
While the anti-Nigerian rampage failed to develop over the
holiday weekend, there were “reactionary Americans” willing to
criticize the Obama administration. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.)
said the president needs to “connect
the dots,” and
accused the administration of trying to
“downplay the threat from terrorism.”
As if on cue, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
told
CNN that there was “no indication that [Abdulmutallab’s
attack] is part of anything larger,” and further
declared that “the system worked.”
Given that the would-be terrorist got past security with
explosives in his underwear, and was foiled only by a faulty
detonator and a brave Dutch passenger, Napolitano’s claim
provoked scoffing by conservatives.
Michelle Malkin depicted Napolitano with a red clown nose.
“Jasper Schuringa is ‘the system,’ apparently,” Mary Katharine
Ham quipped,
referring to the young Dutchman who
subdued the 23-year-old Nigerian.
Napolitano’s assurance that Abdulmutallab’s attack
was not “part of anything larger” seemed to contradict reports
from
ABC News that the 23-year-old Nigerian had trained for his
attack in Yemen with al Qaeda, which provided him with his bomb.
ABC also reported that investigators believe Abdulmutallab had
been influenced by radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki, spiritual
advisor to
Malik Hasan, whose one-man jihad at
Fort Hood left 13 dead in November.
Among the “reactionary Americans” who saw
Abdulmutallab as part of something larger was the chairman
of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
“This year the American homeland has been the target of an
attempted terrorist attack more than a dozen times,” Connecticut
Sen. Joe Lieberman told
Fox News, describing an apparent “breakdown” that permitted
warnings about Abdulmutallab to go unheeded. “To me,
most significantly, what happened after this man’s father called
our embassy in Nigeria? What happened to that
information?”
Lieberman furthermore suggested that, if neglected, Yemen
could become a terrorist haven. “Iraq was yesterday’s war.
Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen
will be tomorrow’s war. That’s the danger we face.”
Lieberman’s call for preemptive action provoked an
obscenity-filled tirade from liberal blogger Spencer
Ackerman, while Matthew Yglesias of Think Progress
remarked, “The good news is that while progressives basically
need Joe Lieberman’s vote in the Senate to pass domestic
legislation…nobody needs to listen to him about Yemen.”
Yglesias then emphasized the “political context” of U.S.
military action in Yemen: “Nobody likes to see American
airstrikes happening inside their country. But if the political
context is right, people can see it as the lesser of two evils.
If the context isn’t right, that can build support for al Qaeda
faster than it kills terrorists.”
By portraying U.S. military action as a basic
cause of Islamic extremism, liberals
thereby implicitly argue that U.S. military action can never be
the appropriate response to Islamic
extremism. The more we attack al Qaeda, Yglesias suggests, the
more Muslims will resort to terrorism — unless we have the
proper “political context,” whatever that means.
Do Yemenis really have such a nuanced perception of
“political context”? This need concern us only if we accept the
tacit proposition that there is potentially unlimited support for
al Qaeda in Yemen or elsewhere in the Islamic world. However,
more than eight years after the 9/11 attacks there is no real
evidence that the U.S. military response has made Islamic
radicalism more widespread than it was in 2001. Suicidal pursuit
of violent death lacks universal appeal and the human resources
of al-Qaeda are not infinite. Therefore, U.S. military action
should not be contingent on “political context,” but rather on
whether it kills terrorists or, at least, deprives them of the
opportunity to plot new attacks at their leisure.
Liberal reactions to the Abdulmutallab case are very
much reminiscent of liberal attitudes during the Cold War. What
was important to liberals then was that the U.S. avoid provoking
Moscow, and that outspoken anti-communists should not be allowed
to exploit public fear of the Soviet menace to the detriment of
well-meaning liberals like Alger Hiss, Owen Lattimore and Harry
Dexter White.
From the so-called “anti-anti-communism” of the liberal
past, we have arrived at the anti-anti-terrorism of the liberal
present. We are not permitted to question the good intentions of
liberals, although perhaps it is still permissible to point out
the destination of the road notoriously paved with such
intentions.
