But hey. Chill. Obama says you're more likely to fall in the bathtub

Brussels attackers were part of plot against nuclear facilities

Since liberals would rather do just about anything rather than take the threat of terrorism seriously, they like to tell us among other things that very few people actually die from terror attacks, and that more people die from falling in the bathtub and whatever else - and of course, from guns, since they hate law-abiding Americans carrying guns much more than they care about foreign terrorists doing the same.

At any rate, their argument is irrelevant. It is not the federal government’s job to keep you from slipping in the bathtub. It is the federal government’s job to stop terrorist attacks, so the comparison is about as meaningless as a thing can be. That may be the reason that Obama has recently shifted to a new argument - that ISIS (or “ISIL” as he and only he insists on calling them) is not an “existential threat” to the United States, meaning they are not going to bring an end to our country by coming here and cutting off all our heads. That is no doubt true, although it’s an awfully sad rationalization for not taking seriously the threat they do pose.

And about that: What makes Obama supporters think ISIS doesn’t aspire to do far more damage than what we’ve seen thus far on their videos? News reports out of Brussels suggest that the attackers there were also plotting to attack nuclear facilities:

  Two of the terrorists responsible for the bombings in Brussels have been linked to a possible plot on nuclear facilities uncovered by Belgian security back in February. Police found hours of video footage tracking a senior nuclear scientist, causing heightened security over the past several weeks at two nuclear power plants and evacuation of non-essential staff after this week’s bombings.

  According to Interior Minister Jan Jambon after the February discovery, there was a threat:

  “to the person in question, but not the nuclear facilities…To date, we have no indication that there is a specific threat to the Belgian nuclear sites. The nuclear industry is one of the best protected areas.”

  There’s a good reason terrorist attempts involving nuclear power plants fail and are rarely a target for attack: Nuclear power plants are incredibly secure with multiple layers of protection.

The point here is not to freak everybody out about the possibility that terrorists are going to easily breach and compromise our nuclear facilities. That would be extremely difficult and would require a far more sophisticated operation than we’ve seen from them yet. Besides, when we talk about the threat of terrorism, the objective is never to get you scared. Your fear or lack thereof is irrelevant. The point is to get Obama and those working for him to take the threat seriously. ISIS may not be able to breach our nuclear facilities today or tomorrow, but they’re thinking about it. And an organization that successfully overran (and still controls) much of Iraq thinks bigger than cutting people’s heads off on beaches.

People can see that, and we don’t need our president lecturing us about how they’re not a threat. We need him assuring us that he takes seriously the threat they do pose. Of course, that’s not going to happen with this president because it’s been clear for some time that he finds it annoying when people expect him to treat terrorism as a priority. It’s too late to un-elect him, but maybe we could at least be smart enough not to fail a second time to learn from the mistake we made in 2008.

Dan Calabrese