What People Hear When The Obama Administration Says We Can “Absorb A Terrorist Attack.”

by John Hawkins | October 7, 2010 1:05 pm

George Bush had a far more difficult job on the national security front than Barack Obama does. We suffered an unprecedented, devastating attack on the U.S. on Bush’s watch and he had to rally the country, go after the terrorists overseas, and implement new security procedures here in the U.S. with liberals doing everything humanly possible to make it easier for terrorists to attack the United States.

Then Obama gets into office, after running against many of the things that Bush did to keep the country safe. Once he got in, for all intents and purposes he admitted that the Left was undercutting America’s security for purely political purposes by keeping many of the policies Bush put in place. Yet and still, because liberals don’t take the threat of terrorism as seriously as conservatives do, our security has eroded since Obama got into office and everybody knows it.

So now, with intelligence reports showing that Al-Qaeda is ramping up its efforts to attack us, Obama realizes that if something happens, it’s going to look really bad for him. So, what are we hearing from his administration[1]?

A US security official on Wednesday said the country was capable of withstanding another terrorist attack and bouncing back, saying Americans needed to put extremist threats in “perspective.”

Michael Leiter, head of the National Counterterrorism Center, said despite recent successes there was no guarantee that intelligence and law enforcement agencies could prevent every attempt by extremists to attack the United States.

“We’re not going to have a perfect batting average and its important that Americans understand that,” Leiter told a conference on intelligence reform.

…President Barack Obama made similar remarks in a new book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, saying the country could handle a potential attack.

“We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever … we absorbed it and we are stronger.”

Can we absorb a terrorist attack? Well technically, a nation can absorb just about anything that doesn’t destroy it. Didn’t Japan “absorb” having two nuclear bombs dropped on it? We could probably manage it, too, somehow or another — but, that doesn’t mean it’s a small matter. It’s also worth noting that we may be stronger today than we were on 9/11, although that’s certainly debatable, but even if it’s so, we’d be even stronger today if there had never been a 9/11.

So, what is this really all about? It’s about the Obama Administration preemptively trying to excuse its failure. That’s why they may be saying, “We absorbed it,” but what people hear is, “We’re not taking the threat of terrorism seriously and the country will probably be hit with a terrorist attack as a result of that. But I mean, come on, you don’t expect us to work as hard as Bush did to keep the country safe, do you?”

It’s true that if the terrorists want to hit us bad enough and keep trying, they will probably get the job done. Additionally, it’s true that we can probably “absorb” a small scale terrorist attack of the sort that Israel has been hit with so often. However, what’s also true is that Barack Obama isn’t treating the threat of terrorism with the seriousness it deserves. So, if there is an attack, he can expect a lot of raw anger coming his way for his lackadaisical attitude — and he’ll deserve every bit of it.