Clap On, Clap Off

What tha? Are we in "Good Hands" from this administration regarding intelligence and security? Maybe they should worry less about control gained via FCC toward Net Neutrality and focus on protecting State department secrets and have awareness of worldwide terrorism activities...

Ignorance about terrorism--negligent and willful.

By JAMES TARANTO

If Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's remark that the government is "working . . . 364 days a year to keep the American people safe" made you nervous, you can relax. In another interview in the same ABC News series, President Obama's "top aide on intelligence appeared to be completely unaware . . . of the arrests this week of 12 men accused of plotting an Al-Qaeda-inspired attack," Agence France-Presse reports:

US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was asked about the attacks, with ABC News interviewer Diane Sawyer posing the questions: "First of all, London. How serious is it? Any implication that it was coming here?"

After a long pause, Clapper replied, "London?" . . .

The 12 men were arrested Monday in a sweep in the Welsh capital Cardiff, the central English town of Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham and in London.

Sawyer brought up Clapper's apparent ignorance of the developments later in the interview.

"I was a little surprised you didn't know about London," she said.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't," Clapper replied.

Later Clapper's office put out a statement calling the question "ambiguous" and asserting: "The DNI's knowledge of the threat streams in Europe is profound and multi-dimensional, and any suggestion otherwise is inaccurate."

Profound and multidimensional or not, the Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz opines, Clapper's unpreparedness "inevitably calls to mind the moment during Hurricane Katrina when FEMA's Michael Brown was unaware during a Nightline interview of deteriorating conditions in Louisiana's Superdome, despite constant news reports that day."
But we are reassured. Obviously Clapper gave the interview on the one day of the year when the government was not working to keep the American people safe. That means we don't have to worry about that day coming again.
Well, until next year--and that's a long way off.
ABC News has a long report on the third in the series of interviews with top national-security officials. Attorney General Eric Holder warns of homegrown terrorism:

"The threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens--raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born," he said.

Hmm, what does that mean, "radicalized"? Presumably Holder isn't talking about math or chemistry, so this is a reference to ideology. What kind of radicals are these homegrown terrorists? Radical Marxists? Radical nationalists? Radical feminists? Radical individualists?
We do get one clue in the course of the story:

Holder says many of these converts to al Qaeda have something in common: a link to radical cleric Anwar Al Awlaki, an American citizen himself. . . .

Authorities say his teachings and writings have been discovered on the computers of a number of radicals who have tried to carry out terror plots here in America. Holder said Awlaki is able to preach violence on al Qaeda websites, and reach new converts.

He's a "cleric," so we know that these are religious "radicals" of some sort. But are they Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Shinto, Sikh, Baha'i, Unitarian Universalist, Zoroastrian or Rastafarian?
If you are a reader of this column, chances are you know the answer is "none of the above." But incredibly, in neither the 1,000-word writeup nor the four-minute video report on the Holder interview is there a single mention of Islam. Not only are the "radicals" not described as Islamic radicals or radical Islamists, but Awlaki is described as a "cleric"--oh so generic!--rather than an imam.
We surmise that this omission is willful. The media and the Obama administration give the impression that they are extremely careful to avoid mentioning the religion in whose name al Qaeda and similar groups commit terrorist attacks. We have a distinct sense that this is driven by fear--that they are suffering from, if we may coin a word, Islamphobia.
Consider the case of the "Nebraska man," described last week by the Bellevue (Wash.) Reporter:

King County prosecutors have filed charges of malicious harassment against a 23-year-old homeless man who insulted another man's sexuality and then punched him on board a King County Metro bus in Bellevue.

Bellevue police arrested Mustaf A. Abdille after a dispute on Nov. 30 between the suspect and several individuals. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Dec. 22. . . .

Officers tracked down Abdille, who had only recently come to Washington from Nebraska and had no place to stay. According to charging documents, Abdille was confrontational and reeked of alcohol.

As he was being booked into jail, Abdille allegedly said "In my country, we kill faggots," and "I'm going to (sic) suicide, and everybody is going down with me; I'm not going alone."

Who even knew Nebraska was a country?