How Many Lone Wolves Does It Take To Make A Pack?

by Nidra Poller (January 2010)

How many lone wolves does it take to make a pack? How many packs make a battalion? How many battalions make a full-fledged enemy in a genuine war?

President Obama copped out on another grave security threat with disingenuous promises and heartfelt finger pointing. Slow on the uptake as usual he finally got around to blaming the CIA—the one G.W. Bush left him– for missing the red flags that should have kept the Jock Bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, from boarding Northwest Airlines flight 253 bound for Detroit—in the minds of unsuspecting passengers—and bound for destruction by the will of Abdulmutallab’s Allah. At first glance Obama’s accusation is plausible. It will reinforce the illusions of softening critics fooled by the Oslo Peace Prize speech and too willing to believe that the American president is finally catching on.

The truth is there are so many red flags it looks like a Revolution Day Parade in the heyday of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, this is the president determined to close Guantanamo and send those “innocent” red-flag-bearers back to their old stomping grounds, beefed up and eager to groom fervent young men like Abdulmutallab for bigger and better exploits. The fact is, the baby-faced Nigerian should be sent to Guantanamo and judged by a military tribunal. And who is talking about red flags? Barack Hussein Obama, whose government is stonewalling a congressional investigation into the Fort Hood massacre.

Come to think of it, if the regime had been forthcoming with information on the Fort Hood martyrdom operation, it might have led to disclosure of the full range of activities of Major Hassan’s mentor, al Awlaki, and his cohorts in Yemen. Some sharp-eyed clerk might have happened upon the plot to send a young Nigerian bearing Christmas gifts from Lagos to Detroit via Amsterdam…in his briefs.

It is easy in retrospect to know that the Jock Bomber shouldn’t have been allowed to board a plane heading for the United States. What about the other 499,999 individuals posted with him on the second string watch list? As these words are written, one of them may be hitching up his trousers and preparing to blow up YOUR airplane. Are they all that different from the latest well-groomed shahid to step up to the check-in counter? How about the Virginia five, recently arrested in Pakistan? Airplanes go flitting from one continent to another and so do young jihadis.

Recognizing one–the Jock Bomber– after the fact is supposed to be proof that the president is getting real about security threats? Recognizing hundreds of thousands waiting in the wings would be called Islamophobic racial profiling and an insult to what Obama calls the “Holy Qur’an.” And we are supposed to poke around in the psyches of these willing serial killers to find out why and where this or that particular individual went wrong? One got it from the mosque, another from the Net, another from an al Qaeda recruiter on campus… 

Fulfilling his “we will not torture” vow the president is determined to disrupt, dismantle, and run through the wringer security personnel who dared, in the past, to interrogate enemy combatants. In his zeal to incriminate the G. W. Bush administration, Obama is pushing the 9/11 masterminds in NY’s face and offering them a civilian trial that will downgrade acts of war to misdemeanors. None of the above stopped him from dashing on screen for a flash in the pan appearance in an open collar meant to indicate his sense of urgency. He pouted, passed the buck to agencies that failed to detect this clear-as-a-bell airplane plot, and preened in his heightened self esteem. That’s his idea of getting tough.

I had intended to add, jokingly, that Mr. Obama might want to hand airport security over to Acorn and the SEIU but the Wall Street Journal took the chuckle out of that one. It seems the security breach is going to be exploited as an argument for unionizing TSA employees. That’s a bit greedy isn’t it? They get to monitor full body scanners and want collective bargaining too?

Will President Obama reconsider his promise to close Guantanamo the day after tomorrow? Not on your life! He sticks to his original script: Guantanamo is a recruiting tool for guys like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. According to The Times of London [Al-Qaeda Groomed Abdulmutallab in London] when Abdulmuttalab was president of the Islamic society at University College London he did invite former Gitmo prisoners to speak, and organized a talk on “Jihad versus Terrorism.” If that’s a red flag raiser, how many Islamic campus leaders right home in the USA deserve one of their own? Problem is, 9/11 happened before Gitmo existed, and Barack Hussein Obama wouldn’t dream of outlawing the Qur’an which is the primary source recruiting tool.

Red flags were ignored, security agencies yawned and dawdled, and the American president won’t put the country on a war footing because it would prove that George W. Bush was right to fight. So it looks like simple citizens have to pick up the slack, put out the fires, save the planes. Can private enterprise help us out here? How about a militarized commercial airline catering to people who know the score? Khaki planes, cabin crew in military fatigues, and all the passengers free to come on board fully armed…except for the lone wolves.

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