Posted on 01/03/2010 2:37:23 PM PST by goldstategop
Congratulations on an outstanding job, Osama. You masterfully pulled the strings, and the most powerful nation in the world jumped. You caused turmoil in major airports around the world on the busiest travel day of the year, cancelling and delaying thousands of flights. Now we discover that there is a new place to hide explosives as we scurry around to devise solutions. Passengers go through a pre...
Passengers go through a pre-flight security screening at Ben-Gurion Airport. Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski [file]
Creating havoc at airports will divert our attention from your real targets. Perhaps our fragile electricity grid? Or our cyber-dependency? Homeland Security, always a step behind you, frantically searches for bombs in the last places you hid them. Since Richard Reid's 2001 shoe-bombing attempt, we remove our shoes before we fly, much as you do before you pray. We are searched for liquids since the 2006 plot to blow up 10 transatlantic flights. You must be chuckling. Now they will have to search our underwear!
As Roey Rosenblith, a passenger on Friday's flight is quoted in Toronto's The Globe and Mail, "Even if he had been thoroughly frisked, the only way the guard would have noticed anything is if he literally put his hands down the guy's pants and searched his groin."
Even the secretary of homeland security is confused. The Sunday after the incident, she claimed that the airport security system was not broken. The next day, she reversed her comments. Both of her opposing claims are right.
Rosenblith wrote in the Huffington Post that everyone boarding the NWA flight in Amsterdam was interviewed by a team of around 10 personal screeners. He said that he was frisked so thoroughly that he began to wonder if the Dutch security official was enjoying himself. They did all they could. And yet Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab succeeded at getting through security.
HE GOT through because although the system is working, the people are not. This is America's greatest strength and also its most perilous weakness. We are brilliant at systems, processes and technology. But in the pursuit of and reliance on technology, the American mind has become fat, lazy and complacent. Any intelligent human could have prevented a man with explosives strapped to his body from boarding a flight only weeks after the man's father warned US authorities of his son's growing radicalism. All that was required was someone to ask questions and connect dots; 9/11 could have been prevented in the very same way.
Ben-Gurion Airport is in one of the most targeted countries in the world for acts of terrorism. Yet it has successfully managed to avoid hijacking and bombing attempts, even though security there is usually much quicker than at any US airport of similar size. Perhaps this is because security at Ben-Gurion does not rely only on technology. Security officers there do not mindlessly monitor people taking off shoes and belts as they walk through metal detectors. They are not just looking for bombs. They are looking for stories, connections and intelligence, and they hire and train brilliant people to look for those stories by asking probing questions.
Once, after clearing security there, an officer looked into my eyes and said, "Do you know why I am asking you these questions?" And then she said with compelling sincerity, "I really don't want anything to happen to you."
I believe she was telling the truth. To her, her job was not about checking boxes to make sure that if a plane went down, her own back was covered. Her job was much more meaningful than that. Her job was to care about me and tens of thousands of other travelers that day, and she was passionately committed to it. She was applying her considerable skill, training and intelligence to her job in the most caring way.
The security check was fast, not unpleasant and genuinely reassuring. Only wisdom and intelligence can foil an intelligent enemy. Machines and process alone cannot.
THE NEED for wisdom over and above technology goes beyond security. We will not maintain our global lead in any field with process and technology alone; we will also need much more human brilliance. Process and technology can be copied, brilliance cannot. Even in the field of technology itself, can a nation continue to lead if it relies more on process than on thinking? Dan Senor and Saul Singer's Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle argues that it cannot.
Process and information is about having the best answers, wisdom is about asking the best questions. Instead of educating our children to have the "right" answers, we should educate them to ask the right questions. Law enforcement and airport security personnel should be trained to ask more questions, not just to rudely yell out childish instructions about computers and liquids. The country's intelligence systems need to preempt rather than react.
Whether Abdulmutallab was an insignificant individual or part of a bigger plan, he highlighted the fact that we can never have all the right answers. However we can ask all the right questions, and in the wise question, the Talmud says, lies half the answer.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelogus
If you depend on some TSA rent-a-cop at the airport to protect you through profiling the passengers in line then you’re naive. The time to stop terrorist acts is days before and miles away from the target, and all evidence indicates that the Christmas Day attack could have been stopped if the known evidence had gotten into the right hands. It did not. That’s where the changes need to be made, not at the airport check-in line.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelogus
More jarring still were Obama’s references to the terrorist as a “suspect” who “allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device.” You can hear the echo of FDR: “Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — Japanese naval and air force suspects allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor.”
Reminds me of when Hitler’s armies “allegedly” invaded Poland, when Saddam’s army “allegedly” invaded Kuwait, when ...... etc. etc.
We’ve gone from the time when Pres. George W. Bush could make that quip about “guess I’d better call my lawyer” to now we have our nation tied in knots by our Lawyer-in-Chief Obamanation, who dares not call a terrorist a terrorist but rather an “suspect” who “allegedly” did something that everyone in the world knows he did......
What a travesty!!!
Imagine what a union could do to that attitude. DeMint: stand your ground.
An excellent article making exactly the points that need to be made.
Thanks for posting it.
Personally, I want Israelis running our TSA. They are damn good at it, and while they can’t always prevent every attack on their soil, they certainly know how to run airport security!
Let me tell you about my New Year's Day flight from Atlanta to Seattle. We're waiting at the gate area and here comes this (what looked like to me) tall American Black women all bedecked out in the usual female Muslim gear, you know, the silk headscarf and covered from neck to ankle with nice looking clothing (I don't know what they call it). Anyway, she waltzes up to the counter, gets a seat assignment, walks around the whole seating area looking for a seat. She had a tad of an attitude but maybe it was just me. The whole crowd looks like, "Oh Jesus, now what do we do?" Then a bearded Sikh guy (fwiw he "felt" okay, but who knows) waltzes up to the counter with his family - anyway he had that Sikh turban thingy on - and gets a seat assignment.
We just so happen were in the last row of the plane, 44, and the Muslim gal was 3 seats ahead of us, the Sikh guy was 2 seats ahead of us on the other side. I'm wondering, did they both get a crotch search? A total cavity search? I knew they hadn't, so it was tension city all the way to Seattle. Did anyone talk with them, interview them, like the Israelis do? I'm sweating bullets when she went to the bathroom. I know Sikhs don't like Muslims, but thought it was maybe a cover. Their proximity bothered me. I'm 65 but was ready to pounce if need be. I honest to God almost didn't get on the plane.
Anyway, we made it, but unless things change, it's just a matter of time until 300 men, women and children get killed. There were a lot of kids on the plane. . .
Iremember being questioned at Ben Gurion airport by a young
lady Israeli security official and she was so sharp and way way above the level of those TSA screeners.
I’m a selfish sunnuvabitch as I actually have the audacity to look upon this Nation as mine. I worked hard with many others like me to make it what it was before the Left twisted everything around to mean something other than what it is.
What the Hell does the Left mean when those like me, and myself have to be the ones that pay the price for some foreign persons crimes against us in our Nation?
The actions of these perpetrators used to be called war. Myself, and many like myself in our Nation used to sign up with our military, and go fight those that perpetrated violence, havoc, and death upon our Nation, and our people.
Now I’m old, retired, tired of the Lefts’ outrageous perspective of how I should survive in my Nation, and I really want to kill something more than ever before, and that which I want to kill is anything the Left has imposed upon me, and those like me whom have fought, and paid the price for what was our Nation.
I want my Nation back the way it was. I want the Leftists removed from my government, because they are the square pegs that don’t fit in the round holes. They are unfit for our society, Hell they aren’t fit for any decent society.
I want to see the Commie bastards out of here, and NOW.
Eff the damned Left, and start profiling the Moozies, and start throwing the bastards out of this country. The Left working to undermine our existance is no more American than are the Moozies working to undermine our existance.
end rant.
I recall reading an article by Joseph Farrah about five years ago saying that he was stopped by Israeli airport security there -- and he was glad of it because it made him feel safer. He said that being of Arab descent, he was exactly the kind of guy that they should have stopped and checked.
Maybe we can help out,,,stop wearing a beard or moustache for the time being maybe it’ll make the muzzies stand out,,,profile that.
Hey Art, if anything ever were to happen, the Sikh guy is exactly the one you want on your side. Sikhs carry a dagger called "a kirpan". I don't know exactly how that they square that with airport security, but all Sikh men carry those daggers as part of their religion. Although they are a peaceful group here in the US, Sikhs aren't wooses.
Only Muslims are trying to Kill Us! So why do we waste time frisking 89 year old Grandmothers so Our Closet Muslim in Hiding TOTUS isn’t offended?? Screw political correctness!! Profiling Works!! When was the last time a beautiful Six ft tall Blue Eyed Blond Swedish Model try to destroy America?
The answer for You Ignorant ACLU types is “NEVER!” When was the last time a Super Rich, Well Educated Muslim try to destroy American Citizens? Yep! On Christmas Day!! of All Days!! Has anyone dared to ask the politically incorrect question of why this Mad, Scumbag Muslim Terrorist pick Christmas Day for his act of Atrocious and Horrific Terror?
Does anyone think maybe they dont like the day of the Birth of Our Savior! In case no one has noticed, th so called Religion of ISLAM is not a religion of Peace.....:-(
Hey thanks for the heads up. Didn't know about the kirpan. I always respect people who are armed. Go Sikhs!
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