stankow:
And I can understand how some could take offense at some of my word choices, and I can also understand how someone can overreact (because I’m guilty of that myself from time to time). No hard feelings, I hope.
“Intel weenies”: just in jest, I assure you. I know a few people who’ve been in that line of work who are–trust me–weenies. I’ve heard other people use the term and have come across it in books and gradually it’s crept into standard usage in Mephistospeak. I never intended to insult anybody by its use. Rather, I was “making fun,” the way some people do when they say, “Military Intelligence–what an oxymoron–har, har, har.” I apologize for any misunderstanding.
Your comment about infantrymen and their weapons training is valid. When I spoke of my fears regarding the possibility of just plucking soldiers from the nearest armories, I was expressing concern about whether the qualifications of the Guardsmen in question had been taken into consideration at all.
I didn’t mean to imply that I thought that Combat Arms units were necessarily the best ones for the job of airport security. That said, I do feel that some military units are better suited to the job than others. I feel this way because different units have different missions (few, if any, involve protecting civilian airports), and thus receive some training that could be applicable to airport duty. Some people, for example, have more weapons training. Others have more first aid training. Still others will have more experience working with the public, or other soldiers in a high-stress environment, or whatever. It’s not, in my mind, so much a question of quality of training as it is type of training. I don’t think a large percentage of the National Guard–or the military in general–would be of much use in a serious airport security operation as anything more than a “visible presence” or in any kind crisis simply because that’s not what they’re meant to do.
I agree that Guardsmen can be useful as an extra layer of security, so long as they don’t get in the way. They give the cops extra sets of eyes and may serve as a deterrent for some of the bad guys. My fear, though, is that if Something Bad happens, the Guardsmen will get in the way.
Of course I realize that the Guard presence at the airport is really more about having a visible military presence than “practical security” (I know, the two are related). Perhaps in the final analysis, America’s continued use of airplanes on a large scale will be shown to be a huge victory for our Psychological Operations people.
So who should guard the Anytown International Airport? Well, obviously I think not the Guard. But if this is our best choice, I would hope it would be Guardsmen who then received practical training and testing in certain skills (marksmanship, first aid, crowd control, and a bunch of other stuff) and who were thoroughly briefed on their place and how they were expected to interact with various other people in the event of an incident. And who knows, maybe there has been some good training going on but my cynical nature makes me doubt it.
I should say in closing, however, that the National Guard (of which I was a part) makes me feel a hell of a lot safer than the O’Hare rent-a-cop who got so distracted by my steel toe boots that she let me on the plane without even checking the rest of my body for guns, knives, and nuclear devices.
