If President Obama had come out immediately and labeled the Christmas Day “Underwear Bomber” fiasco a “security failure,” he would have been just as correct as he was the following Tuesday after “connecting the dots” and coming to the same conclusion. And he would have seemed a lot more in charge.

Lets review: The young Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had no U.S. passport; his student visa for even leaving Yemen had expired three months previously; he had an inflammatory web site---and his father, a Nigerian banker, had months ago alerted U.S. authorities to his “extreme religious views.” I believe he also paid for his ticket in cash and had no luggage. According to family members, the father was shocked to learn that his son was even allowed to fly to the U.S.

There is such a thing as being too thoughtful, too careful---and our President is just that. I’m guessing he didn’t want to jump to conclusions or ruffle feathers within the vast bureaucracy he commands. Sure, he has now reached the right conclusion---but he darned well should have reached that conclusion, publicly and forcefully, five minutes after learning details the public already knew---not five days later.

It all boils down to the weaknesses of large bureaucracies. I worked in the Alaska State Bureaucracy with a very wonderful, very thoughtful, very detail-oriented, very hard-working, very moral and very intelligent man named “Max.” The only things he lacked that President Obama has was charisma and aspirations to high office. Max was, of course, totally hopeless. He assumed, for instance, that the latest “memo from Juneau” was 1) fact-based, 2) logical, 3) had the best interests of the people of the State of Alaska at heart and 4) had the interests of State Employees as their next greatest concern. And, however inscrutable these memos were, he felt they demanded thoughtful examination and implementation.

“You can’t assume these memos are logical,” I would always say. But the bureaucrats in my office (welfare Quality Control) would pore over them for meaning as if they were the Dead Sea Scrolls.

A month later Max would approach me with another, contradictory memo in hand, and say, shaking his head: “You were right---you’re a lot smarter than I am.”

You have to understand that this Golden Individual was just as intelligent, far more thorough and far more conscientious than I.

“Wrong,” I would reply, “I’m no smarter than you---only faster.”

Like all bureaucratic systems, State and Federal Governments work to their best levels of incompetence because of “true believers” like Max---people who actually believe in the system and believe the bureaucracy is sincere in it’s stated premise. Most government bureaucracies function as well as they do because of a few, hard-working people. Of course, it is this blind belief in and adherence to the system that makes most bureaucracies so vulnerable. The Federal Government people I worked with told me that, on the federal level, things were “much worse” than on the State level.

As a State employee I took heart for Humanity in the seemingly inherent inability of soul-less bureaucracies to function to full efficiency. For instance, it is possible for knowledgeable individuals to evade the apparently endless reach of overbearing bureaucracies by simply capitalizing on the inherent weaknesses of these large systems.

[Disclaimer: I am not rooting for al Qaeda simply by pointing out their more clever strategies and tactics.]

Anyway, not unlike al Qaeda dealing with the huge, American commercial, political and military bureaucratic presence in their lands, I found it relatively straightforward to poke the gigantic State of Alaska bureaucracy with a stick and watch the system trash aimlessly around. Once you realize that “bureaucratic systems” are nothing but big, dumb, blind organisms, they can be exploited by relatively weak individuals who “know the system.“

Bureaucrats, by the way---mostly division, department and agency heads---exploit systems weaknesses routinely to strengthen their own job security and make room for cronies. That’s why incompetence thrives within the “old boy” bureaucratic networks---surviving long after Administrations change and politicians leave office.

President Obama is a “systems” guy---it is why he was allowed to run for the Presidency. But his reliance on systems is also one of his greatest weaknesses.

Let me relate this to the attempted low-tech terrorist attack:

Just as George Washington crossed the Delaware River with an inferior force and surprised the Hessians at Trenton, New Jersey on Christmas Day 1776, so too did al Qaeda time their attack in order to catch security personnel in a holiday daze. As a result, the entire “system” broke down.

Al Qaeda may or may not be weaker than it was after 9/11. However, Osama Bin Laden is winning, and America is losing, the hideously-named GWOT---“The Global War On Terror.”

Osama Bin Laden is playing Americans for fools. Look at it from his point of view. All he or the Yemeni al Qaeda had to do was provoke America into overreaction. They didn’t even have to down the airliner to scare the pants off Americans!

In the most short and simple terms: as a result of the attempted downing of an airliner, the giant America is casting blame within it’s own ranks; fixing to install more high-tech and expensive “scanners;” planning to lash out wildly with high-tech missiles and other forms of military “retaliation;” planning on giving even more money to the weak Yemeni government and, in the process, is thrashing itself to pieces and spending itself further into global bankruptcy.

It is reported that those airport “puff” scanners supposedly designed to detect traces of explosives on clothing are a totally useless and expensive failure. Likewise, those extra “full body” scanners now being proposed may or may not detect explosives in the pants---and most certainly cannot detect explosives contained within the body.

The “money shot” here is that a list of politicians and ex-officials promoting these devices---from former Bush-era Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff to Newt Gingrich---have monetary or lobbying connections to the various companies that make these expensive “body scan” devices. Chertoff’s security consulting agency has, as a client, a manufacturer of these body scanning machines. [“Thou shalt not consult” should be the 11th Commandment.]

Therein lies a final weakness of large bureaucracies---their vulnerability to people like Michael Chertoff, familiar with the system, to extract huge amounts of money from the public with their dubious business schemes. From the benevolent non-regulation of the finance industry to the War On Terror---this strip-mining of money from the public by “insider” exploitation of the bureaucracy is the very basis of our entire government failure at the start of this new decade.