There he goes again. Or maybe there it goes again — Mayor Bloomberg’s blind spot on Islamic ter rorism. On top of his cheerleading for the Ground Zero mosque, the mayor now opposes congressional hearings on the radicalization of young Americans.
He says that hearings aren’t “necessary or appropriate” and that he parts company “quite severely” with Pete King, the incoming head of the Homeland Security Committee in the House, a usual mayoral ally who plans to investigate the issue.
Bloomberg’s comments are at odds with law-enforcement concerns. Indeed, it’s a rare day when Eric Holder makes anybody else look like the most politically correct dove in the room, but even the attorney general believes the growing threat of homegrown terror must be forcefully addressed.
“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,” Holder said in a TV interview yesterday.
Citing attempted attacks across the country, including one where a college student in Portland, Ore., tried to blow up a Christmas-tree-lighting ceremony, Holder said homegrown terror “keeps me up at night.”
Maybe the mayor is sleeping too well, trusting the NYPD’s intelligence units and contacts with imams and other Muslim leaders. Then again, Bloomy has consistently been behind the curve on the terror issue, even though Ground Zero is only blocks from City Hall.
When Holder proposed to bring the trial of 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed to lower Manhattan, Bloomberg quickly gave his support, though he later jumped on the bandwagon of opposition after Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the trial would make New York a greater target.
Even stranger was the mayor’s first instinct after the attempt to detonate a car bomb in Times Square in May. “Maybe a mentally deranged person or someone with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health-care bill or something,” he said then. “It could be anything.”
It could be anything, but it was the same old thing — a Muslim fanatic trying to kill innocent Americans. And this one was a naturalized Pakistani who had gone home for bomb-making training.
I first reported last month that King, a Long Island Republican, would use his chairman’s clout to examine the radicalization taking place in mosques and prisons. He called that one of the areas off-limits to probing by Congress when Democrats ran it.
“We never had a hearing on the plan to close Gitmo,” King told me then. “We never had a hearing on the massacre at Fort Hood. Or on the plan to hold the 9/11 trial in New York.”
The new chairman, the son of a former city police lieutenant, also doesn’t shy away from using the word “profiling” when it comes to improving airline security.
That kind of talk makes some knees jerk, including apologists for terrorists. Bloomberg, while clearly not in that camp, nonetheless adopts a duck-the-truth posture out of a fear of making things worse.
“The concern with hearings is that they could create a feeling of persecution that, fair or not, will hand a propaganda tool to radicals and weaken the bonds that we’ve been working to strengthen,” an aide explains.
“Fair or not” is a telling phrase. Just because we can’t control the enemy’s propaganda doesn’t mean we should fear the facts. Our weakness only makes the terrorists stronger.
Fair hearings on a life-or-death issue for Americans are not only the right of Congress, they are the duty.
Joe Biden in blunderland
Somewhere along the line, Joe Biden’s gaffes stopped being funny. That would be about the time they started endangering our troops in Afghanistan.
A day after the vice president declared that American troops are “going to be totally out of there, come hell or high water, by 2014,” the White House had to issue a correction, saying Biden meant to say the “combat role” would end in 2014.
A slip of the tongue? Not likely, since Biden did the same thing about the initial planned drawdown date of 2011. President Obama, in ordering the surge, said those troops would start to come home then.
After military leaders complained the fixed date was aiding the enemy, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates later insisted the 2011 timetable would depend on the situation and the White House agreed. Biden said not true, telling a writer that, “In July of 2011, you’re going to see a whole lot of people moving out. Bet on it.”
The pattern reflects something more serious than Biden’s penchant for putting his foot in his mouth. He opposed Obama’s surge, arguing for a smaller footprint in Afghanistan, and he still seems to be resisting it.
Either that, or he’s playing to the left wing of his party, which hates the war. By making Obama’s commitment to it seem uncertain, Biden could be trying to keep the lefties sullen but not mutinous.
Whatever his motives, Biden’s out of bounds. The policy is set, and to suggest otherwise emboldens al Qaeda and the Taliban and demoralizes our troops and allies.
World War II produced a saying: Loose lips sink ships. A vice president shouldn’t need a reminder in a time of war.
AGE DOESN’T MEAN SAGE
There’s no fool like an old fool, my mother used to say, and John McCain and Harry Reid are proving her right. One a Republican, one a Dem, the Senate alter kockers are giving old people a bad name.
McCain tweets, or somebody tweets for him, to Snooki, the “Jersey Shore” train wreck. Reid messages Lady Gaga, as though they’re BFFs. “We did it,” he tweeted her after the Senate repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
Remind me again, how is this good for America?
Pedal it elsewhere
Here’s the predictable path of the tyranny of the minority. With the city spending millions to make bike lanes for a relative handful of New Yorkers, collisions between bikes and vehicles are on a record pace. Duh.
Now that The Post has reported the carnage, you can bet the city’s response will be as illogical as the lanes themselves. City Hall zealots will further restrict auto traffic, adding more congestion and emissions, and look to ticket drivers. They also will litter the airwaves with an expensive “education campaign” telling bikers to behave.
Let’s save time and get next year’s news now: still more accidents, higher taxpayer costs and more tickets for drivers.
What a setup – don’t blow it!
Andrew Cuomo may be the luckiest man alive. He had Carl Paladino, the Buffalo buffoon, as an opponent and he gets to succeed the dopey duo of Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson.
They’re such an easy act to follow that if Cuomo merely stays out of trouble, he’ll be a great governor by comparison. Here’s hoping for more than that, but a governor who’s honest would be a welcome change in 2011.
UN mucked up
A headline says, “Sewage Pipe Bursts at UN.” Isn’t that repetitive?