Travellers who had to take to the skies in the last few days know only too well about a Nigerian youth who tried to set off an incendiary-explosive device as his transoceanic flight was about the land in Detroit. Not surprisingly, as a response to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s alleged attempt to destroy a passenger jet, the authorities tightened security. If they tighten it much further, depending on how they go about it, terrorists may be able to retire. Our security bureaucrats will have paralyzed air transportation for them.
It’s too early to say whether Abdulmutallab failed because he was inept or because he got cold feet. He might have bungled his attempt to blow himself up, consciously or subconsciously, because he thought better of dying at 23, regardless of the number of virgins he could expect as a consolation prize. But the young fanatic may have been supplied with dud explosives by what he reportedly described as his al-Qaeda contacts in Yemen.
If Abdulmutallab was given duds, it was most likely because al-Qaeda’s bomb-makers hadn’t perfected their new explosives yet. It’s possible, though, that his sponsors considered bringing down an aircraft less important than making a terrorist gesture. The masterminds of jihad may have figured that dispatching insufficiently trained and equipped saboteurs would still do the trick, because security authorities can be counted on to multiply the effects of terrorism by their anti-terrorist measures.
Simply put, our security bureaucracies have a way of maximizing disruption by refusing to focus their defences.
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Notes:
4:20 pm EST, January 1st, 2009 — I’ve just reset the sidebar video to one I ran for the first time on September 29th, 2009. In light of everything going on in the country this very day it seems appropriate because we are witnessing something akin to the revolution that permitted the mad mullahs to grab control.
Perhaps I’m a bit sentimental. If so I apologize but it seems to me that the video is the best thing I’ve seen come out of Iran since the theft of their election. It also seems to me that people in the west are trying desperately to ignore a nation’s fight for freedom as we continue on our merry way. We should not because Iran is the source of all evil in the Middle East this day and I want to keep everyone’s eye on the ball.
My view — if the Iranian regime changes much of the violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Yemen will go away.
That’s not wishful thinking — it’s fact — and so I support the green movement in that country. It seems the proper way to start out a new year and the video will be up for awhile.
Too bad that Obama doesn’t want to help the Iranians change their government.
mid island mike
Re: #1 — He’s a “woosie” Mike. He talks a good line but has nothing to back it up. Street cops meet these clowns all the time and it always ends up the same way.
“The slammer.”
The cynical part of me wonders if Western governments aren’t perfectly happy to use this whole terrorism thing as a pretext to keep the unwashed masses “in their place”. Over the last few days I’ve lost track of how many references to the El-Al model of airport security I’ve read. Makes way too much sense to ever be tried here.
What we have now in most Western countries is an army of people who, up until 9-11, would have been found stocking shelves in WalMart, but now they’ve been given uniforms and badges and the authority to tell business executives and elected officials (and you and me and your 90-year-old grandmother, by the way) to “bend over and spread”.
I am by no means a frequent flyer… maybe half a dozen trips per year… and I’m old enough to remember when the whole flying experience was, if not exactly fun, at least not unpleasant. Now I absolutely loath the prospect of a trip by air… not because of any terrorist threat but rather, due to the dehumanising, humiliating crap we’re expected to endure at the hands of our own “security” apparatus.
Mass screening doesn’t work. It’s been proved over & over again. The army of folks mentioned by Glen haven’t changed that and won’t change it. The only thing they do is provide a false sense of security for government officials and a great deal of unjustified hassle for honest citizens.
Kill terrorists don’t ‘watch’ them. As soon as he returned from terrorist training a bullet should have been put in his head. End of story.
It’s not America’s business to change Iran’s government
#6…your right of course Cynapse but they have tried it before with disasterous results. Everyone remember American hostages being captured and held for such a long time by the Iranian Guard?
And to our Country’s credit, a number of American diplomats were rushed out of Iran using Canadian passports.
Ah yes, the Shah – America’s last great attempt at nation building in the middle east. Showing just how much they learned from that fiasco, America is now imposing the hated and corrupt Hamid Karzai on Afghanistan. Does anyone doubt this will result in a severely undemocratic reactionary government the way that happened in Iran?
I can still remember the americans running around trying to find a new place for the Shah to hide/live after being kicked out of Iran. No wonder Bush said that America was not in the business of ‘nation building’ – wait, I’m wrong as he tried it in Iraq.
Sorry, that was all about ‘weapons of mass destruction.’