GOP draws a bead on terror issues
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
With congressional elections already under way, Republicans today seized on airline security and the broader issue of terrorism as issues that could help them define their 2010 campaigns.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian who spent time in Yemen, has been charged with trying to blow up a jetliner en route from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day. His device burned him and he was eventually subdued by passengers before the aircraft landed safely.
Aside from the obvious security questions about airline travel safety, there are political considerations and Republicans lost no time in staking out a position, calling for tougher action and faulting the Obama administration.
Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said today on CBS’ “The Early Show” that the Obama administration needs to do better in talking to the American people on terrorism, an issue that won’t be going away.
This was a continuation of his attack that began Sunday when he told “Fox News Sunday” that “the threat to the United States is real. I think this administration has downplayed it.”
New York Rep. Peter King also again took to the airways this morning, arguing that Abdulmutallab should be tried by a military tribunal rather than a civilian court. King, the leading Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, spoke on NBC’s “Today” show following appearances on television throughout the weekend, when he called for better security at airports.
Obama on Monday tried to preempt the political problems when he outlined his review of how Abdulmutallab smuggled the device aboard the flight and the role of watch lists. Abdulmutallab’s father had contacted authorities about his son’s increasing radicalism, but the United States did not lift his visa or put him under a stricter no-fly regime.
But the Christmas Day incident allows Republicans to raise a variety of issues: airline security and the competence of federal agencies, civil rights for detainees, and the Obama administration’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp where terror detainees have been housed.
The incident also allows Republicans to revisit broader questions of how Obama is fighting Muslim extremists around the world while still being able to support the administration’s escalation of the war on Afghanistan.
-- Michael Muskal
