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Monday, January 4, 2010

The Question Nobody Has Asked.

Received today from a reader who apparently shares my feeling that the whole kerfuffle over the Underpants Bomber is way overblown:
Nobody has mentioned the obvious, at least to me, question: What are they going to do when the next guy sets his suicide bomb off IN THE AIRPORT? Before he goes through security.Just tell people they can't use the airport without screening before they go in? When the next next guy sets his bomb of outside the airport at pre-airport screening, then what?
Anybody who's been paying attention knows that all this stuff is essentially for show. It's about making people feel safe, not about making them safe.

I am amazed that we have turned into such a nation of frightened sheep, even more so---or maybe not---that the most frightened among us appear to be those who are loudest with their bluster in other circumstances.

Dick "I got a deferment for that" Cheney is, of course, the poster boy for the Cowardly American.


3 comments:

  1. I wonder that anyone can be frightened of these idiots at all. Yeah, they had one horrendously successful attack eight years ago...and since then, every known attempt has been a dismal flop. We've restricted them to using the most difficult kinds of explosives (ones that apparently they can't even manage to ignite properly) and we've prevented them from ever again using their previously successful methods--hijacking and using the plane itself as a weapon.

    Their ground-based plans have been incredibly looney-tunes (six guys attempting to attack one of the biggest military bases within the US?) and easily infiltrated and averted.

    These people aren't masterminds...they're real-life versions of Wile E. Coyote. I'm much more concerned about home-based right-wing terrorists like the Oklahoma City and Atlanta Olympics bombers--because we don't seem to be pursuing them or working to prevent them at all.

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  2. Apropos of my last comment--check out this posting on Andrew Sullivan's blog:

    http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/why-didnt-he-just-blow-himself-up-in-the-toilet.html

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  3. As the reader who sent that comment to Jack, lemme say this to Pat. I think the reason that the underwear bomber did not set himself kerblooey (scientific term), is that that he thought being next to a window made it more likely to blow a hole in the plane's skin and thus crash the thing.

    But really, when the next thing happens in a place that is Not An Airplane In The Air, the whole security thing is gonna be nuts and we will see just how much more willing people will be to give up their liberties than you imagine Americans to be, just to "Be Safe".

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