Obama Takes Heat Over National Security Concerns

Dec 29, 2009 6 Comments ›› Erik Wong

Financial Times:

Republicans have seized on the Christmas Day attempted terrorist attack as evidence that Democrats are weak on national security issues, as they seek to bolster their credentials ahead of next year’s Congressional elections.

As the Obama administration’s investigation into how a suspicious Nigerian man was able to carry explosives onto a US-bound aircraft gathers pace, a slew of Republicans have criticised everything from the president’s slow response to his plans to close the controversial Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

“Soft talk about engagement, closing Gitmo, these things are not going to appease the terrorists,” said Jim DeMint, a Republican senator from South Carolina.

“They’re going to keep coming after us, and we can’t have politics as usual in Washington, and I’m afraid that’s what we’ve got right now with airport security,” Mr DeMint told Fox News.

President Barack Obama on Monday made his first remarks on the attempted attack, vowing to track down “all who were involved” in its planning and use “every element in our power to disrupt and defeat violent extremists”.

Security has been tightened dramatically at airports across the US and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting an inquiry into how the incident happened.

But Republicans have been emboldened by the administration’s faltering response to the attempted attack. Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, on Sunday said that “the system worked” but later performed a U-turn, saying that the system did not work and “no one is happy with that”.

Peter Hoekstra, a congressman from Michigan and ranking Republican of the House intelligence committee, said that the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, should have had a red flag next to his name.

“You would have thought this would go right to the top of the list,” Mr Hoekstra told CBS on Tuesday. “This threat is real … We need to be on offence.”

Americans traditionally perceive Republicans to be strong on national security issues, and it is likely to be a strong factor for voters in the mid-terms elections in November 2010.

But analysts warned that Republicans’ tactics in this case could backfire.

“If this line of attack continues, it is going to reveal problems not just with the Obama administration but with the homeland security system, a system that was put in place by President [George W.] Bush,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor at Princeton University.

“If Republicans want hearings into what happened, it could very well, like the 9/11 commission, raise questions about what Bush-era failures, and that would be politically dangerous,” Mr Zelizer said.

Indeed, some Democrats are already pointing to Republican obstructionism on national security matters.

More than 100 Republicans in the House voted against the Department of Homeland Security’s 2010 appropriation bill funding airport security measures including explosives detection systems.

Furthermore, Mr DeMint has controversially blocked the Obama administration’s nominee for head of the Transportation Safety Administration, Erroll Southers, leaving the agency without a leader.

However, Denis McDonough, chief of staff of the White House National Security Council, played down the fact that the TSA has no permanent administrator, saying “we have a very able team of career professionals at TSA”.

But he told reporters in Hawaii, where Mr Obama is on holiday, that “the president is eager to have his TSA head on the job”.

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