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Okay, I hope you are ready for this: another big crackdown on the innocent traveling public who have done nothing wrong. It started within hours of the latest “shoe bomber” type incident, only in this case it was a leg bomber, the guy who set himself on fire in an apparent attempt to bring down a Northwest/Delta flight from Amsterdam just as it was about the land in Detroit.
Here is what the Washington Post is reporting today, Saturday (12.26.09)
“British Airlines issued a bulletin on its websites announcing that its customers flying into the United States will be allowed only one carry-on item, and attributing the change in policy to American security officials. British Airways said flights bound for the United States from London's Heathrow Airport were delayed be
tween 30 minutes and an hour.”
Of course, this should come as no surprise. The actual purpose of such crackdowns is to show the public just how serious everyone is taking the threat of terrorism. Why in the world would they now limit carry-on baggage to one item? It is easy to surmise that they have wanted to do that all along and are using this occasion to further make the process of traveling from place to place even more uncomfortable. That mission creep has been the pattern now for over eight years. Both the airlines and the TSA use such scares as this to turn the screws on the traveling public.
The solution to the problem, for the average traveler, is readily available: take the biggest carry-on you can reasonably put in the overhead bin on an international flight and get your DVD player or computer out of that bag. (Hey, a terrorist could think of this solution, too, but who says there has to be any logic in the age of prison like measures at airports?)
Within a short time, law enforcement agencies should have a clear idea of what the apparent would be bomber had on him and how he managed to get it passed the check points. That’s the important information from all of this, but we can expect many completely unrelated efforts to increase “security”.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS COMPLETE AIRPORT SECURITY
The TSA, the Federal government, the White House, all the kings horses and all the kings men are telling us a lie. They want us to believe that airports can be secured by treating everyone who boards an aircraft like a prison escapee. Therefore, we tolerate massive mistreatment of ordinary citizens going about their business and, should there be a successful attack, they can’t easily be blamed, because, after all, weren’t they doing all they could? It is a lie, but it is a useful one from the government’s perspective.
Flying in an aluminum tube at 500 miles an hour is an inherently dangerous activity (how many people even know the aircraft goes that fast?). The biggest “security measure” taken after 9-11 was to harden the pilot’s station and to tell the pilots to keep the door locked at all times, except for careful, and quick, bathroom breaks. That part of the system received almost no attention. It means that there probably will never be another successful airline hijacking in American skies. The primary danger now is from explosives in the luggage hold and 90% or more of our attention should be turned in that direction, not in patting down little babies and 80 year old grandmothers before they board the plane (I have seen, with my own eyes, these examples and many more in traveling by air).
With all the airport security, with all the attention to tracking passengers and trying to identifying those who might be a threat (the late Senator Ted Kennedy was stopped from boarding an aircraft twice), it would not be difficult for a determined and careful terrorist to bring down a commercial airliner. Far easier, in fact, than anyone of us would like to believe next time we fly. It can never be made 100% safe and the law of diminishing returns means that vastly increased measures would only yield minor improvements. We are chasing a chimera.
The best place to stop terrorists is before they get within fifty miles, or even a thousand miles, of an airport. The approach of tracking and intervening before terrorists can strike seems to be working rather well, the exception being when the military is used to invade countries (we’ll have to see about that one).
The same law of diminishing returns means that al Qaeda, or almost any other terrorist group, has very little to gain by blowing up an American airliner (which, of course, doesn’t mean they won’t try). The big splash they made on 9-11, 2001 did not get the results they wanted and, instead, resulted in an American engagement on two fronts, as well as crackdowns and arrests around the world. In a very real sense, they failed on 9-11 because of their spectacular success. To have that sort of impact again would take a massive, coordinated effort and, if it happened, would only trigger a greater response and world unity against them. They need to come up with a new plan and why should we assume they are any less smart than we are in realizing this fact?
FREELANCE AGENTS
The images of destruction broadcast around the world on 9-11 appears to have had one, secondary effect for which the terrorists might have hoped: they inspired people to try to emulate them in England, Spain, Indonesia and many other places. The good thing, from the perspective of the west, is that most of those so inspired can only do “one off” attacks (they usually die in the process or get arrested immediately afterward) and have not been able to set-up a coordinated effort on a large, sustained scale. We have seen a pattern of a small group of young men with family and religious ties to the middle east try to cook up terrorists plots in their kitchens, which have represented serious threats to human life, but no larger threat to the west or western civilization.
Here is another thing to keep in mind: whatever the terrorists might do, short of a nuclear weapon or similar destruction, means very little in the long run. They can harm us, but they can’t stop us, nor can they easily deflect America’s influence on the world. In time, this wave of terrorism will run out of steam. Unfortunately, the events of Christmas day now provide a great new opportunity for the military and intelligence communities to get more money and power, regardless of whether it helps. If Bush were still president, he, or his handlers, would be looking for a country to invade.
The “copy cat” aspect of terrorism has always been its greatest potential for destruction within the US. The threat, in every nation, is being attacked from within, not from outside. Why? Because the logistics, coordination and financing of attacks from outside are too difficult to employ in an otherwise peaceful world and, further, because the terrorists, at this point, do not have the resources of a government with which to work.
If one were to drawn 1,000 mile wide concentric circles around the middle-east, it is clear that the potential for terrorist attacks goes down in each successive thousand mile zone. Unless the Islamic extremists are prepared for the “long march” of a fifty years long effort to organize around the world, the lower level of danger should remain that way. Indeed, the greatest danger to America, especially to our economy, might yet be seen to have come from the two wars Bush and company undertook in the wake of 9-11. We have done damage to ourselves that they could only imagine.
But, brace yourselves, travelers. It doesn’t matter if the guy in Detroit was a lone nut case, trying to make himself some sort of hero to the terrorist world. It doesn’t matter if he had zero chance of brining the plane down. The “security theater” at airports, as one expert called it, is the place where the government can try to demonstrate just how much they care about you, even as they treat you, and your aging aunt Minnie, like a common criminals. The big crackdown is on, new rules will be put in place, the lines will be much longer and travel will get that much more unpleasant. It is enough to make you want to walk to Europe.
Doug Terry, 12.26.09
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