President Obama used his State of the Union address to urge Americans not to fear terrorists: "We lead best, when we don't let our fears blind us to the opportunities that this new century presents."
But his words reached Americans when the Gallup Poll notes that 40 percent of Americans are very or somewhat worried that they will become a victim of terrorism — a higher percentage than when Obama took office in 2009.
They have reason for concern. From Day One, this administration has downplayed the terrorist threat from Islamic extremists. It declared the terrorist attack at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009 as "workplace violence."
It pulled all US troops out of Iraq, allowing ISIS to move in and create a training ground for terrorists. Protracted negotiations with Iran have allowed that rogue nation to fortify and proliferate its nuclear facilities.
Even Sen. Robert Menendez, former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a Democrat, says President Obama's statements on the issue "sounds like talking points coming out of Tehran."
President Obama even had to apologize for not sending a high-level official to the unity rally in Paris protesting the murders at Charlie Hebdo by Islamic terrorists.
Much has been made of the fact that Attorney General Eric Holder was actually in Paris at the time of the rally, yet he also skipped the march.
That failure brings up the fact that the attorney general was in France to meet with officials on methods to counteract terrorism. But the smartest thing the French could do would be to ignore any advice Holder gave them and do the exact opposite.
Eric HolderPhoto: AP
Obama and Holder have implemented the politically correct view of coping with terrorism by shifting to a weaker, criminal model of prevention — the kind that miserably failed during the Clinton administration, when Holder was the No. 2 official in the Justice Department. It was Holder who decided that terrorists should be read Miranda rights.
In fact, he boasted in 2010 that failed shoe bomber Richard Reid, who was not an American citizen, was "advised of his right to remain silent and to consult with an attorney within five minutes of being removed from the aircraft."
Holder had no concern over losing the opportunity to interrogate Reid in depth about his backers, as well as other possible terrorist attacks.
It was Holder who decided that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his coconspirators should be tried in a civilian courtroom in New York City, just blocks from where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood.
Counterterrorism experts say that would have been a propaganda coup for al Qaeda and a security nightmare for the city.
Former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who as a federal judge presided over the successful prosecutions of the terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, said that this decision made "it look like amateur night" at the Justice Department and made the US "look weak."
Mukasey pointed out what Eric Holder doesn't seem to understand: "It is a mockery of the rule of law to take people who are charged with violating all the rules of war and put them in a situation that's better than the one they would have been in if they followed the rules of war."
Eric Holder thinks (from left) Nidal Hasan, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Richard Reid pose the same threat as common criminals.Photo: AP (3)
Holder was unmoved by the protests about the millions of dollars for security a trial would cost, or concerns that the city would be a prime target for terrorist acts designed to disrupt the trial.
It took an act passed by a Democratic Congress withholding any federal funds to house the terrorists in New York that forced Holder to reverse his decision.
From his first day in office, Holder began reshaping the Justice Department's attitude towards terrorism. That included hiring many attorneys who, during the Bush administration, had worked strenuously on a volunteer basis to help terrorist detainees in Guantanamo Bay escape justice and to severely weaken the comprehensive security measures that had been implemented by the federal government after the horrific events of 9/11.
Many of the detainees who were eventually released from Guantanamo have reengaged in terrorism.
One of those lawyers Holder hired once said that freeing dangerous terrorists was an "assumption of risk" that must be taken to "cleanse the nation of Guantanamo's moral stain."
She and others with similar viewpoints should not have been given the authority to direct policy on the prosecution of terrorists. It would be like hiring mob lawyers to fight organized crime.
Through his hiring of biased, hostile lawyers and his treatment of terrorists as ordinary criminals; his orchestrated, ideological attack on the intelligence community; and his highly selective prosecutions of government leaks, Eric Holder has weakened national security.
Sadly, the last thing the French and other allies should do is to take any advice the Obama administration has to give on fighting terrorism.
John Fund is the national affairs correspondent for National Review Online. Hans A. von Spakovsky is a former Justice Department lawyer. They are coauthors of "Obama's Enforcer: Eric Holder's Justice Department" (HarperCollins/Broadside 2014).
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