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There is never likely to another successful airline hijacking of an aircraft in the sky across N. America. The reason is simple: after 9-11, 2001, the resistance to “hardening” the flight station of the aircraft ended immediately and all commercial aircraft of any size now cannot be accessed from inside the passenger cabin. No pilot would dare let any hijacker in, because it is beyond a doubt that the consequence would be death.
The pilot, knowing an attempted hijacking was underway, would take action to “disrupt” the movement and ability of the hijacker to cause further harm. In the process, passengers might be seriously injured and several deaths might occur in the cabin (not caused by the hijackers, but by the evasive actions). The pilot would land the aircraft at the nearest airport and, if possible, escape the aircraft by unconventional means to prevent demands to be flown elsewhere.
Some pilots now have loaded guns available on the flight deck, so anyone who got inside would likely have an unpleasant time, very fast. Guns on aircraft are highly dangerous, but most people would take a chance with a pilot having a gun versus following the desires of a hijacker. Easy choice, in fact.
So what are all those people doing x-raying, poking and prodding passengers at the airports? Some have called it “security theater”, and that is a good description. They are looking for bombs, of course, and anything that might be carried on board by a nut case or even by accident. Problem is, they are looking at everyone who goes on board instead of looking for an actual hijacker or terrorist. If they find one, it would largely be half blind luck. Treating the entire American population as potential terrorists is not only counter productive, it is an insult.
The job of the TSA is to make passengers feel safe, whether they are safe or not. So, if it takes a virtual strip search with multimillion dollar machines, so be it.
None of this is to say that there aren’t serious security threats, at the airport and elsewhere (everywhere). The recent package bomb discoveries showed that the terrorists are still trying, they are still determined and the are looking for new ways to succeed.
Every American should realize some facts:
1. We are likely to have at least one major terrorist attack within the next three to five years. This is almost a dead certainty. Our military involvement in Iraq took us into direct contact and conflict with the Arab world and the high hopes with which the enterprise was begun quickly descended into chaos. We became the enemy. We made hundreds of thousands of new enemies and very few new friends from 2003 into 2010.
2. Don’t worry about being hijacked in the sky. The chances are one in many millions and getting smaller by the day. The terrorist know they cannot succeed and only an idiot terrorist would even attempt such an action.
3. There could be other types of hijackings or hijacking attempts. Here are a couple of possibilities:
A. A hijacking from the ground. This is not very likely, it would be a bloody, horrible mess, but it could happen. I will not describe any of those possibilities, however, because I don’t want to give any ideas or information to anyone who might think of such an act.
B. A car bomb attack on an airport. This seems unlikely because it would not serve the larger purposes of terrorists, would be difficult to pull off and would not disrupt air travel for long.
C. A missile strike on an aircraft taking off or landing. Security officials have long known about this possibility. If there are any loose, Stinger type missiles in the United States, then government officials should warn passengers accordingly. Counter measures by commercial aircraft, on last reading, were not being widely implemented. The one known Stinger type missile attack on a commercial airliner overseas failed. (CUBAN AIRLINER SHOT DOWN)
D. Some other type of terrorist attack. It does not seem unreasonable that terrorists could be getting frustrated with their attempts to bomb aircraft. If they have any other ideas, will they pursue them? Our biggest protection is the distance between here and the middle east and the difficulty of entering and setting up shop in this country. The greatest fear, which has so far not panned out well for terrorists, would be the use of native born or naturalized American citizens.
Why do I say above that some sort of major terrorist attack is likely over the next three to five years? For one thing, we have seen repeated efforts to do so. There was the shoe bomber, followed by the pants bomber followed by the package bomb attempt. They clearly are trying. While we have been relatively peaceful since 9-11, there have been terrorist attacks in England, Spain, and southeast Asia. No one knows at this time why an airliner (Air France) flying from Brazil to Africa crashed over the southern Atlantic ocean.
9-11 showed the terrorists that it was possible to attack the “far enemy” and do so in a spectacular fashion. Terrorists are not generally concerned with geopolitics and the fact that they might loose much more than they gain from the next attack. They are motivated by anger, ignorance of the west and our society and a desire to do something big that the whole world will see. They are more interested in causing harm than they are moving their cause forward, because they are working from carefully generated and maintained resentment and anger, with a strong mixture of historical ignorance mixed in.
Most of the security attention in the US has been focused on airliners. This is a natural outgrowth, of course, of the events more than nine years ago and the fact that being up in the sky traveling 500+ miles an hour is an inherently dangerous activity. No one wants to take on one ounce of added danger. The only reason to believe that terrorists have continued to focus on airliners themselves, however, is the fact that they are accessible from locations in Europe and the middle-east. In other words, other targets were not available.
As soon as the terrorists find ways to enter in and reside in the U.S., as the 9-11 plotters did successfully, we can expect their focus to turn away from airliners and airports, in all likelihood. Why? Because they will probably go for easier targets with less intense security around them.
Our best efforts, as always, should be aimed at stopping them from getting into this country in the first and place and, indeed, stopping them in their tracks were they organize and plan. Some of those efforts are known to be completed successfully do this date, but the bulk of our attention should always be aimed at the start of a terrorist event, not when it is near its conclusion.
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