Several years ago - but a while post 9/11 - the Atlantic had an article about changed airline “security”. Talked about the questionable utility of assuming that terrorists would repeat what they had done before, and outlined several quite doable ways small numbers of dedicated individuals could cause tremendous disruption and expense.
Consider the ease at which people can obtain explosives and powerful weapons, the porousness of our borders, and the vulnerability of our infrastructure. How much money has gone into addressing these problems, compared to airline security? And how much added-value does each increasingly expensive and inconvenient security measure contribute?
It has always befuddled me why the assumption is that terrorists will attack planes again. Moreover, so long as they don’t manage to fly a plane into a skyscraper, even if they manage to bring down the occasional plane we could assume those costs far more easily than what I consider to be the costs - both monetary and psychic - of our war on terror.
How about we acknowledge that air traffic is inherently dangerous, and cannot be made 100% safe. Have the airlines assume the costs of increasing security to a level that passengers are willing to assume, even if that means fares increase tremendously and airlines or flight routes go under. Heck, I can do a pretty good job of keeping myself safe from airplane bombs by staying off a plane.
Psychic costs? I guess the War on Terror has an element I had not considered. Or maybe you just meant psychological.
As I’ve mentioned several times in this thread, the attention (and funding) going towards making air travel safer - or of pretending to make it safer - is vastly out of proportion with the risks of air travel.
Yeah - I guess if we had had sufficient psychic investment …
Was uncomfortable with the word as I dashed that off.
What would you use as a shorthand way to refer to the “cost” of changing the mindset of so many Americans to be fearful and distrustful, to willingly cast off liberties and values that (IMO) are critical to what America purports to be, and to adopt policies that almost seem designed to encourage and reward war profiteering? Not to mention an eagerness to adopt policies that predictably earn near unanimous condemnation from other countries, and which rule out more humanitarian alternatives?
Even all that doesn’t quite cover what I was trying to suggest by that one poorly chosen adjective.
Only if you think that an individual with a bomb isn’t armed, and that an airplane full of people isn’t a crowd.
Lots of people are capable of smuggling bombs into crowds. Lots of people are capable of killing themselves willingly for a cause. However the intersection of those two group is pretty rare.
The hard part of terrorism is finding someone loony enough to be willing to blow themselves up into smithereens while still retaining enough brain cells to follow the simple instructions necessary to do it.
Funny, the big story a few months ago was the full body scanners. They were too intrusive and women were unhappy with them. Muslims hated them. We are always balancing a persons rights and dignity against the very slight chance of actually catching a potential nutcase or a terrorist.
This latest one was a rich kid . He wasn’t much of a threat but he may have served as a probe of the system. Now a real terrorist has more info about vulnerabilities.
A nice public trial in our regular justice system is in order. Tom Ridge came out against using the judicial system, yet the shoe bomber , on his watch, was tried in civilian courts, convicted and jailed.
I don’t know if it was The Onion or what other satyrical source, that shortly after 9/11 printed a headline: “To the USA from Britain, Spain, Israel etc. : Join the F------ Club.”
BTW re: the thread title – a lame poser can still pose a real threat, multiple lame posers more so.
It’d be a lot tougher if we just had some bomb sniffing dogs touring the security lines. But the only time I’ve ever seen one is with my brother, who works with one.
Oh for… would you guys stop trotting this crapola around ? Is it a talking point from TV or something ?
Here’s what you do, chuckles : go to your local airport, purchase a ticket. Jot down what you see security folks doing on your way to the plane. Do the same at your destination. Go back home, put all the notes on a billboard and look at them intently (possibly in different clothes from time to time, and with a power ballad wailing in the background). There. You now know everything there is to know about air traffic security and vulnerabilities. Of which there are many, and will always be so because it’s *impossible *to secure mass transit of any kind.
Besides, it’s not like the rich kid in question is in position to offer his supposed AQ handlers feedback and constructive criticism on the operation, is it ?
Nice OpEd in today’s paper observing that when we impose greater restrictions upon domestic passengers, we are giving these yahoos more impact on our society than they merit.
Yeah, that barn door sailed a long, long time ago.
For fuck’s sake, we have all sorts of Rightards bitching and screaming that Obama didn’t immediately start running around in circles and playing Chicken Little.
It’s more or less impossible for the teeming masses to know the reason there haven’t been more successful acts of terrorism in the US and other western countries.
The nature of the intelligence community isn’t to go around celebrating every foiled plot with a victory parade. There might well have been a multitude of successful interventions that we’ve not heard a thing about. There might just as well have been very few, and we’ve just been relativlely lucky that AQ and isn’t as active or capable or funded or whatever enough to try very many things.
I agree with those who say that active intelligence is much more likely to be effective against terrorism than making people take off their shoes. We’re just not likley to be told exactly how much more effective it is.
With this latest incident, the alleged terrorist had the explosives in his underwear, specifically the crotch. Now there’s talk to install full body scanners at all airports. Well, according to the brochure for the Rapiscan Wavescan 200 (PDF warning), the only area blocked from scanning is the crotch.
It seems to me the terrorists remain a step ahead, again.
They have plenty of feed back from the news ,don’t they? They know whatever he tried to do failed. If he was truly being led by someone, they have more info about what happened and why it did not work.
If he was a poser trying to make a statement, the lesson was his.
It’s useless feedback. They know he managed to sneak a bomb on the plane (but not how*), they know his device didn’t go up as planned (but not why), and they know he got stopped by passengers freaking out (which isn’t entirely unexpected when someone sets his dick on fire).
and no, “he hid it in his underoos” isn’t specific enough data to help a future plan any further than simply watching TSA goons searching people would. How did he hide it, and when ? How did he succesfully hide the bulge ? Was he just lucky enough to not be singled out for a random search, or was he searched but the customs guy didn’t pat his crotch ? Were there any close calls ? Dogs ? If there were dogs, how did he fool them ? Etc…
Nothing is so complicated in a underwear bomb, that lessons weren’t learned. How complicated do you thing it was? This is low level terrorism here.
Wait until they develop a suppository bomb. Then getting on a plane will be real fun.
So… it’s so easy and mundane there are no specific lessons to learn, but it’s worrying because now the terrorists have critical new info about US air security and its vulnerabilities ? Pick a side and stick to it, I’m getting dizzy here
Robin Cook, the late foreign secretary, claimed “al Qaeda”, “the base”, was originally the CIA nickname for their mujahideen assets. So al-Q is just a name, and the name was dreamt up by the CIA. Ironical.
The American government has been calling this an incendiary device, rather than explosive. Reminds me of a Sun headline: “I kicked burning terrorist so hard in the balls that I tore a tendon in my foot”. He’s standing for parliament now. Some bloke drove a 4x4 into Glasgow airport and set off a “bomb”, the only effect of which was the set the car and him on fire. So the “hero cabbie” kicked him in the balls and snapped a tendon in his foot while the “terrorist” was on fire.
Al Qaeda’s strategy against the United States is–and always has been–to get the West to overreact and (counterproductively) lash out at Muslim interests, thereby drawing more of the Muslim world to their side. Osama bin Laden has been pretty clear about this at least since 2004:
Note the phrase “human, economic and political losses.” I am certainly glad no human losses resulted in the failed bomb attempt, but the jury is still out on the other two. Plowing another 30 billion into Afghanistan and spending untold sums on full-bosy scanners and heightened government surveillance doesn’t make me optimistic on the economic front. And you can bet the recent decision to halt repatriation of Yemenis held at Guantanamo and the new Muslim-country-specific air-security rules are exactly the political windfall Al Qaeda has been hoping for. From that perspective, even if the actual attack failed, it has still been a victory for the terrorists.
