Oops.

Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano’s said Sunday that “the system worked.” She was discussing the U.S. effort to deal with Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab’s Christmas attempt to blow up a Delta flight carrying 300 passengers and crew.

Because the system utterly failed, Napolitano’s statement is rising to the level of George W. Bush’s famous line, spoken to inept Federal Emergency Management head Michael Brown shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, that "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." Bush’s presidency never got past those eight words. His Gallup approval ratings, at 50% in mid-2005 before Katrina, mostly stayed below 40% after Katrina.

Napolitano isn’t the president; Obama can fire her in fact. In that sense, Napolitano’s words damage Obama less than Bush’s own words relating to Hurricane Katrina hurt Bush. Nevertheless, here’s some of what makes Napolitano’s words count so heavily against Obama:

➢ Napolitano is in charge of Homeland Security, and her liberal (Anita Hill’s lawyer), non-security background (contrast her with ex-war hero Tom Ridge and rail-thin Justice Department tough guy Michael Chertoff, her only two predecessors) makes her from the word go seem unqualified to protect us. That reflects badly on Obama.

➢ Obama and Napolitano don’t like the “war on terror,” which supposedly ended with Bush-Cheney’s departure. Napolitano replaced the term terrorism with the phrase “man-caused disasters,” saying,”we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur."

➢ Fact is, Obama and Democrats hate the “war on terror.” It helped Republicans defeat Democrats in the 2002 and 2004 elections, when Republicans charged Democrats were weak on fighting terror before 2001 or in Iraq. Republicans truly worry about external threats to America and are willing to go to war against them. Democrats don’t believe foreign extremists threaten our way of life. For Democrats, the big threats are poverty, environmental degradation, and discrimination at home, best fought with money we can’t afford to waste on overseas wars.

➢ The real Obama wants to close Guantanamo, gain international recognition for outlawing “enhanced interrogation,” bring to justice Americans involved in illegal torture of terrorists (including Dick Cheney if possible), protect suspected U.S. terrorists from having their communications monitored, try terrorists in U.S. civilian—not military—courts with full U.S. constitutional protections, and be the man who understands the world’s people seek to move beyond U.S. imperialism to an era where we all live together in peace.

➢ Democrats fight terrorism now only because they have to. Democrats will bring the troops home as soon as it is politically possible to do so. They believe we are close to having a majority of Americans opposed to any overseas military involvement for any reason—recognizing our real challenge is at home.

For these reasons, Napolitano’s attempt to defend a failed response to Islamic extremism with the words “the system worked” is a disaster. It confirms American popular suspicion that the Obama who made Napolitano his Homeland Security boss isn’t serious about the threat Islamic terrorism poses for the U.S.