Amid the escalation of discord, verbal sniping, and finger-pointing within our government representatives, President Obama stated today in his speech to the nation about our lapses in security, “The buck stops with me.” It was Trumanesque, to be sure, but honorable. He took accountability for failures in national security that nearly had disastrous effects on Christmas Day.

The tone he struck calibrated the absolute fact that we are “at war.” The magnitude of his message must not be lost. He called out the CIA and others who had failed to “connect the dots” to the terrorist who had been trained in Yemen. Stopping short of firing individuals as a way of appeasing partisans, Obama set forth strident efforts to be implemented. In one of these changes, he will augment the number of federal air marshals in both domestic and international flights. And the correlation among agencies dealing with national security issues is to become intrinsic, not continue like a sibling rivalry.

As Americans we need to recognize that this war is unlike any we have known. Terrorists are organizing, not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but in Yemen and Somalia. Tomorrow another country may be added, and the day after that, yet another country. We need to nullify these terrorists, but it cannot happen through whining which transcends our purpose: to keep America safe. This is the most intellectual game of chess ever played. If we as a nation do not coalesce, we may find ourselves in checkmate. Obama has set the tone. It is incumbent upon our government officials not to eclipse this message and exacerbate our problems by continued discord and self-aggrandizement.

—cher