Epic Fail

My youngest is now 16 and "Epic Fail" is the most recent addition to his repertoire to find its way into the household vocabulary . Joining the ranks of "choke", "tank", "crash and burn", "whiff", "flop", "bomb" and others that I'm sure to be forgetting, "Epic Fail" just has a compelling ring to it for those times when performance doesn't quite meet expectations. It also has fewer unfortunate connotations for some situations than phrases like "crash and burn" and "bomb". You know, situations like failed attempts to blow up a US airliner full of passengers. The versatile phrase applies quite well to both an underachieving bomber that can't blow up his own pants and the government responsible for stopping him before he gets the chance to try. Interestingly, the connotations of the phrase can morph from describing the haplessness of an incompetent wannabe bomber to describing a government failure of epic proportions.

The failures apparently began long before the attempted bombing and there is no telling when they will stop. One of my favorite epic fails in this saga is Napolitano's initial assessment that the "system worked". Hmmmm....so the system  relies on a bomb or bomber malfunction at the point of detonation? Ironically, I'm pretty sure that the Secretary was attempting to reassure the American people that the situation was under control. Two epic fails for the price of one, the system didn't work and the statement was definitely not reassuring.

President Obama took a brief break from resting in Hawaii to state that we "will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable." Fortunately Mr. Obama was able to pave the way back to his resting by almost immediately identifying the bomber as an "isolated extremist". Let's see, "all who were involved" vs. "isolated extremist"...epic fail.

The government reveals its contempt for the intelligence of the American people every time the profiling question is raised. There is always quite a rush to say that profiling on a religious or ethnic basis is wrong. Well, profiling -only- on a religious or ethnic basis is wrong. Including religious or ethnic components in the profiling when there are clear religious and ethnic trends among the people that are actively seeking to do harm is common sense.

When our public servants start thinking that they are lords and benefactors of the American people then this type of contempt for the intelligence of their 'subjects' is inevitable. The little people have to be reassured so they don't do anything rash and the less they know the better. The clamoring for full body scanning at airports is still ramping up. I'm not sure whether it is driven more by the fitness lobby or the scanner manufacturers, but it just seems like some common sense measures might be in order first. Improving passenger profiling (gasp!) and interagency coordination on controlling visas might save us all some time at the gym and a few hundred lives in the bargain. Not improving profiling and interagency coordination in the wake of what just occurred would certainly qualify as an epic fail.

For some reason the US government continues to refuse to act as if we are at war. We recently experienced a truly epic failure due to this attitude at Fort Hood. Our military bases are not on a war footing and neither are the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, et al. The panty-bomber is now being processed through the US justice system. The military's and inteligence community's ability to interrogate and determine the scope of other potential threats is being limited by government insistance on viewing the attempted bombing as a crime, rather than an act of war. There are reports out of Yemen that there are more bombers making plans. The bomber in custody may have information that could save American lives. Ideological disdain for both the military and the idea that America is at war with Islamic Extremism may inhibit the ability of the United States to take advantage of information currently sitting in a US jail. If the result of this approach is that another bomber succeeds, that success will represent a failure of truly epic proportions.