Inability to See the Dots - Our Hindered Ability to Confront Radical Islam | Fighting Radical Islam

Inability to See the Dots - Our Hindered Ability to Confront Radical Islam | Fighting Radical Islam: "Inabilities to See the Dots, Not Merely Failures to Connect Them, Is What Hinders Our Ability to Defeat Radical Islam

By Tawfik Hamid

After the recent terror attempt on Christmas Day President Barack Obama boldly said that U.S. intelligence officials had 'sufficient' information to uncover and disrupt the plot to blow up Flight 253 over Detroit but 'failed to connect the dots.'

This terror attempt by the Nigerian Muslim Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab raised several concerns in addition to the above mentioned president's concern about a failure of the US system to connect the dots. There is no single doubt that this event among many others such as the Fort Hood Massacre point to a serious problem in connecting the data together. However, the question that MUST be raised in this context is, have we only failed to connect the dots or have we actually failed to see them to begin with?

Since Sep 11 and in fact before it we failed miserably to see several clear dots and threats that could have changed our approach to the problem of radical Islam and enhanced our capabilities to fight it.

Some of the dots that we failed to see include the following:"