I generally liked what President Obama said today about the national security problems brought to light by the failure to prevent a terrorist attack on one of our aircraft. I think that it was perhaps the strongest statement of his position on the subject since his election. However, there are two issues with which I take exception.

The first item is the general position that there is essentially no one to blame for the failure to “connect the dots.” I’m sorry, but there is. At the time of 9/11 we had agencies (the CIA and FBI, at least) who were not communicating with each other on matters of national security, though not necessarily through any fault of their own given the legal constraints that had been put on the agencies earlier. The Department of Homeland Security was formed specifically because of this situation and was given the mission of coordinating this information. There can be no denial that the failure to “connect the dots” was the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security, and that the head of that department failed in her duty. There is someone to blame but there is no will to place that blame where it belongs.

Make no mistake about it, the Christmas Day terrorist attack was not an attempted attack, it was a successful attack, ameliorated only by dumb luck. People in the Obama administration should be held just as accountable as if the three hundred people on that flight had lost their lives.

I am glad to see that President Obama did not avoid the use of the word terrorist in his speech, but he studiously avoided the phrase “war on terror.” I would have loved to have seen the reaction of his supporters if he had used that Bush-ian term, but the fact is that what we are in is a war on terrorism, not just, as Obama claimed, a war on al Qaeda. While there is no doubt that al Qaeda is the biggest and most visible Muslim terrorist organization plotting against the U.S., it is not the sole combatant on the other side of the war.

Not all radical Muslims belong to al Qaeda. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, is not known to have any direct ties to al Qaeda nor was he operating under their instructions, but he is the type of domestic terrorist with whom we are also at war. Al Qaeda is not the only terrorist faction worthy of our security efforts and President Obama would be well advised to broaden his definition of the war on terrorism. Let’s hope that there is no need in the near future to again try to “connect the dots” of failures in our security agencies.