This past Christmas Day, families came together to celebrate one of the holiest Christian holidays of the year. That evening, were it not for a Christmas miracle, holiday revelers would have turned on the TV to discover that nearly 300 travelers on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 had died in a crash somewhere between Amsterdam and Detroit, murdered by an Islamic jihadist. If Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had only properly detonated his concealed stash of Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN, our country may have suffered an attack of proportions not seen since 9/11.

Abdulmutallab began his jihad in Yemen where he received training with al-Qaeda. He was on a terrorist watch list, had no visa, bought a one way ticket — in cash — and had no luggage. His father had even warned a U.S. embassy of Abdulmutallab’s radical ties. Nevertheless, he managed to avoid every inch of airport security, boarding a Detroit-bound plane with high explosives sewn into his undergarments. Abdulmutallab’s near success was a product of total institutional failure on behalf of President Obama’s Homeland Security Dept., but more importantly, the chilling aftermath unveiled Obama’s dangerous naiveté.

The president immediately rushed to declare Abdulmutallab an “isolated extremist,” only to be flatly contradicted by al-Qaeda, which claimed responsibility for the attack, as well as Abdulmutallab, who admitted to having received al-Qaeda training. The Nigerian terrorist then boasted to authorities, “More bombers are coming from Yemen,” confirming what the U.S. Intelligence Community has known for years: al-Qaeda continues to train terrorists in Yemen, a country nearly as lawless as Somalia. Indeed, U.S. intelligence has now discovered that two ex-Guantanamo Bay detainees, released into Yemen several years ago, are suspected of being responsible for planning Abdulmutallab’s failed bombing of Flight 253. Yet despite the clear and present danger in Yemen, Obama is preparing to close Guantanamo Bay, effectively releasing even more terrorist masterminds into the Middle East.

President Obama has refused to admit that the failed Northwest bombing was an act of Islamic terrorism, a coordinated effort on behalf of an international terrorist organization, because to do so would imply the manifestly obvious fact that America is still knee-deep in the War on Terror. Radical Islamic terrorists continue to wage war on the United States, but how are we to fight back against an enemy we cannot acknowledge? Obama is acting like a child who believes that by shielding his eyes he may become invisible to the world. America is the problem; if we can apologize and ignore their clearly stated intentions, the threat of radical Islam will go away. Obama’s “nuanced” ideology is now tasting a cold, hard dose of reality.

Ironically, 44 percent of Americans now wish President Bush were back in office. Perhaps that is because the former president, for all his flaws, knew we were at war, and fought with the intention of winning that war. Americans want a commander-in-chief that will take our enemy seriously and fight them on the front lines, lest they, on Christmas Day, follow us home in a plane bound for Detroit.

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