Patterico's Pontifications

5/2/2010

Napolitano’s Leadership

Filed under: Government,Terrorism — DRJ @ 8:19 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Janet Napolitano is President Obama’s Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS and Secretary Napolitano are responsible for protecting America from terrorism, illegal immigration and border incursions, and disasters — including disaster preparedness, response and recovery. The DHS has been challenged by several incidents during the last 15 months but Napolitano’s initial response has consistently been to downplay the incidents, especially in cases where there appears to be a single perpetrator:

  • December 2009 — The Christmas Day underwear bomber:

    “Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has created controversy over her remarks that “The system worked” on CNN’s “State of the Union”. She was referring to the terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.

    Napolitano changed the remark on later appears on the Sunday news shows, including “This Week” on ABC, by saying thing worked “after the attack”.

    Critics say Napolitano’s remark indicates the system is to allow terrorists on planes and then depend on passengers for ensure safety.”

  • Later reports questioned whether Napolitano and other national security officials were promptly advised or consulted about the Christmas Day incident.

  • March 2010 — Joe Stack’s suicide plane crash into the Austin IRS building:

    To our belief, he was a lone wolf. He used a terrorist tactic, but an individual who uses a terrorist tactic doesn’t necessarily mean they are part of an organized group attempting an attack on the United States,” Napolitano said.”

  • May 1, 2010 — Car bomb in Times Square:

    “Homeland Security Janet Napolitano told me that right now there is no evidence that car bomb found in New York’s Times Square last night is “anything other than a one-off.”

  • Some terror attacks are the work of organized jihadi groups, some are unknown, and others are committed by one or more individuals like Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Yet Napolitano strangely avoided any comparison between McVeigh and Stack, the Austin suicide pilot who did act alone:

    “Napolitano distinguished [Joe] Stack from Timothy J. McVeigh — who was convicted and executed for carrying out the 1995 attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people — citing McVeigh’s “tactics, organization, motivation and the like.”

    “When you get to a lone wolf, which is what really the Austin issue was, it’s very debatable whether you would put them in the same bucket,” Napolitano said. “For my purposes, it’s, ‘Where do we focus our resources?’ And where we focus our resources is on protecting the country from organized attacks.”

    It probably was hard to anticipate what Stack did but are we measuring terrorists based on their number and organizational skills? Apparently Napolitano doesn’t think DHS should focus on individual threats unless they have big, organized plans like McVeigh. Maybe this is why our enemies are sending operatives individually into American cities.

    During her confirmation hearing, Napolitano intentionally used the term “man-caused disasters” rather than terrorism. At the time, the response focused on why she chose to use the more benign term — disaster — instead of terrorism. But maybe the real problem is Napolitano’s consistent willingness to blame every attack on an unstoppable individual, until proven otherwise.

    — DRJ

    UPDATE: In the comments, Baxter Greene suggests Napolitano’s response to the Fort Hood shooting is another example. President Obama’s response was even more disappointing.

    17 Responses to “Napolitano’s Leadership”

    1. Supreme Court

      What could go wrong?

      Surely she must be wise?

      SteveG (6fa662)

    2. man caused disasters as opposed to “acts of god”and the third catchall “it’s bushes fault”.

      clyde (9e51f9)

    3. Would this also qualify as “isolated” coming from
      Naolitano:

      (concerning the Ft. Hood Shooting)
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hood_shooting

      Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stated “we object to—and do not believe—that anti-Muslim sentiment should emanate from this … This was an individual who does not, obviously, represent the Muslim faith.

      Now she did come out later and make this statements:

      http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2010/February/Napolitano-Calls-Fort-Hood-Shooting-Terrorism/

      In a hearing, Wednesday, Napolitano said “violent Islamic terrorism was part and parcel of the Fort hood killings” by American soldier Nidal Hissan.

      …but as it stands…the Obama administration has not confirmed or even made a statement in the effect that the Ft. Hood shooting was terrorism.

      …..looks to me like another example of playing down a serious incident to save face.

      From what we know now,especially Hasan’s ties to the jihadist cleric Al-Awkali,his statements and actions showed a deliberate and pre-meditated act of murder in the name of Islam.

      ….of course yelling “Allahu Akbar!” while murdering US Soldiers might have been a dead give away also.

      Baxter Greene (af5030)

    4. As much as people like to ridicule the term, “man-caused disasters” can be a useful term for categorizing disasters, of which terrorism is a subset (man-caused disasters with a particular set of motives).

      The more alarming part of Napolitano’s analysis is that her null hypothesis (her initial assumption) is that an act is “a one-off.” This means that the only way she can conclude that the act was one of terrorism is if she gets sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis.

      Unavoidably, this means that sometimes she will commit what statisticians refer to as a Type II error (accepting the null hypothesis as true when it is, in fact, false). This is among the worst possible outcomes, and would occur in every case where there is not sufficient evidence (usually >95% likelihood in the field of hypothesis testing) that the null is wrong.

      She could also make a Type I error (rejecting the null hypothesis as false when it is in fact true), which results in wasted time and resources; this doesn’t strike me as particularly dangerous, since every agency has to manage its resources effectively. To make such an error, she would need strong statistical evidence (>95% confidence) that her null is wrong, when the null is in fact true; I imagine there are few such cases.

      With these assumptions, false positives (believing that an act is part of a terrorist plot, when in fact it isn’t) seldom occur, and will probably not have dire consequences.

      False negatives (believing that an act isn’t part of a terrorist plot, when it fact is is) might occur more frequently depending on what confidence level she requires, and could have extremely dangerous consequences.

      But suppose she instead took as her null hypothesis that such acts are presumptively part of a terrorist plot.

      With these assumptions, false positives (believing that an act is not part of a terrorist plot, when in fact it is) seldom occur, but have dire consequences.

      False negatives (believing that an act is part of a terrorist plot, when in fact it isn’t) could occur quite often, depending on what confidence levels she requires, but would only have dangerous consequences if resources are taken from important investigations and directed to dead ends.

      CliveStaples (c94407)

    5. Wow, there used to be paragraph breaks in there.

      CliveStaples (c94407)

    6. Those two words in the title of the post make my brain itch when you put them together.

      I get the impression we are seeing a redo here. Morris told Clinton if he wanted a second term we could not go to war, so repeated, escalating acts of war were called criminal acts. Viola, no war, just a bunch of dead Americans from “criminal” acts.

      Obama does not think a new 9-11 would look good on his watch so nothing is a terrorist act (unless it can be blamed on right wing extremists).

      Machinist (9780ec)

    7. CliveStaples,
      When you refresh you will see your formatting.

      Machinist (9780ec)

    8. Baxter Greene — Good point. I’ll link your comment in the post, and thanks.

      Clive Staples — Agreed. Hopefully Napolitano’s public statements do not reflect what DHS thinks or does. I suspect her goal is to avoid inflaming or scaring average Americans, but it’s not her role to play the reassuring mommy to a nation of witless children.

      DRJ (d43dcd)

    9. She plays down the incidents in order to 1) save face; 2) avoid alarming the public; and 3) avoid inflaming hostilities among Muslim terrorists . .

      IOW, the wimpy lefty hat-trick!

      Icy Texan (ad8815)

    10. but it’s not her role to play the reassuring mommy to a nation of witless children.

      Unfortunately, this administration and congress treats the public in exactly this manner.

      Dmac (21311c)

    11. It may be possible to believe that DHS “thinks”.
      That’s rather difficult to believe when referencing Ms. Napolitano. I’m surprised there’s not shoe polish on her lips from the frequent insertion of one or both feet in her mouth.

      Mike Myers (3c9845)

    12. #6 Machinist:

      two words in the title of the post make my brain itch

      Oh, is that all?

      Hell, mine goes spastic and starts doing jumping jacks or sumpin’ warming up to a fight or flight response.

      EW1(SG) (edc268)

    13. Too old, the tissues sag too much for mental jumping jacks.

      Machinist (9780ec)

    14. #13 Machinist:

      the tissues sag too much

      LOL! I flatter myself to imagine that spasticity is equivalent of an exercise.

      EW1(SG) (edc268)

    15. You said Napolitano and leadership in the same sentence…… Ah Hahhhhhha hha hah – You’re killing me…. Hoo hoo hoo

      Ted (a119ca)

    16. Yer doin’ a heckuva job, Napolitanie!

      GeneralMalaise (53ce9e)

    17. Hey, you’re too hard on Distaff Napoleon. She fearlessly responded to the Gulf oil rig disaster after ten days or so. Heckuva job!

      Kevin R.C. O'Brien (98ea56)


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