The partisan debate that has ensued in the wake of the failed Christmas Day bombing of a plane landing in Detroit has largely glossed over a simple reality: that no president, no government, no society can explicitly protect against terrorism.
Democrats and Republicans have spent the better part of this week hurling accusations. Republicans pounced when President Obama’s Homeland Security secretary, Janet Napolitano, said “the system worked.” She was referencing the fact that the flight crew, with help from passengers, made sure the would-be bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, didn’t succeed. She was also referencing the international response to the foiled attack, where federal security protocols were put into motion to ensure no other flights were in danger.
Of course, the system as a whole failed. It failed in letting this man on an airplane, even after the bomber’s own father contacted government officials with the fear that his son had become radicalized and might attempt some sort of terrorist attack.
Parsing Napolitano’s words after the fact hardly makes us safer.
Democrats countered the Republican onslaught seeking to portray Obama as aloof to issues of national security. Democrats pointed out that the system that allowed Abdulmutallab onto the plane was put into place by the Bush administration. It was a Republican president who designed such a bureaucratic system of competing lists, granting some privileges like flying while others — if detected — would be grounded.
Just as with the Republicans, the Democratic I’m-rubber-you’re-glue strategy does nothing to increase security.
The entire back-and-forth demonstrates two things. The first is that lapses in national security are a bipartisan problem.
The second, far scarier reality is that the price we pay for an open society is the ability for those who seek to do us harm to infiltrate largely undetected.
It’s time for Americans — and our politicians — to move beyond this Pollyanna view that the president has some superhuman power to protect us. We must demand supreme competency from our security forces, but we also must acknowledge the simple reality that no one can guarantee Americans their complete safety from terrorists.
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OUR VIEW: Security debate misses the point
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