At first glance, the story seemed ridiculous: a man tries to detonate highly advanced explosives concealed in his underpants on a Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, but instead sets himself on fire. Ouch.

But there’s nothing ridiculous about the latest chapter in terrorist attacks against the United States. Sept. 11, 2001, should have taught us that everything is possible.

Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, a fundamentalist Muslim from Nigeria who had a privileged upbringing and was educated in London, yet had shown a predilection for Islamic extremism. Even his prominent economist father warned intelligence officials of his son’s radical views.

But that wasn’t enough to raise red flags that would ban Abdulmutallab from entering the United States, the way British authorities banned him from entering the U.K.

The Obama administration seems determined to revert to a pre-9/11 mentality that Islamic terrorism is a matter of common crime rather than an ideological war that has been waged against the United States for years. That view puts the U.S. in a defensive position, always waiting for a crime to happen, rather than pursuing an offensive campaign, connecting the dots to prevent terrorist acts from happening.

Take this bit from an interview in which Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was asked if there is any evidence of ties between the underwear bomber and al-Qaida: “Right now, that is part of the criminal justice investigation that is ongoing, and I think it would be inappropriate to speculate as to whether or not he has such ties.”

Well, that may seem an appropriate reserved response, except that multiple media sources were already reporting the perpetrator’s radical links. Napolitano went on to say this: “And one thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked.”

That turned out to be a widely derided statement because it reflects everything wrong with the way the government regards Islamic extremism and the persistent threat of terrorism.

Early on, the Obama administration went out of its way to avoid the term “war on terror,” and Napolitano called terrorist incidents “man-caused disasters.”

There is a strange reluctance to even identify the obvious enemy. Despite a huge amount of evidence that he was ideologically driven, Major Nidal Hassan was initially regarded as merely a disturbed individual after the massacre at Fort Hood in Texas. Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed deep concern about a backlash against Muslims and “diversity” in the military. That incident will go down as the textbook example of politically correct malfeasance — Hassan’s openly expressed radical views were long ignored by his superiors and intelligence agencies in order not to upset anyone’s sensibilities.

And of course, Attorney General Eric Holder has made the outrageous decision to grant Khalid Sheik Mohommad and four other terrorists — the worst of the worst — a silver-platter show trial in New York City, extending them constitutional rights even though they weren’t even apprehended in the United States.

There needs to be a wake-up call: the U.S. is not dealing with a crime wave and lone nuts; it is dealing with a relentless enemy that is widespread and driven by a common cause. The extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary leadership, not political gamesmanship.