Posted on 03/12/2002 10:33:17 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge might be a nice guy. He might be close with President George W. Bush. He may have been a decent governor of Pennsylvania. He may have served his country gallantly in the armed forces.
But Tom Ridge doesn't know a thing about protecting the lives of American people from terrorism.
He proved this the other day when he said airline pilots should not be allowed to keep guns in the cockpits to thwart hijackings.
"I don't think we want to equip our pilots with firearms,'' Ridge said in an interview with USA Today. ''That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.''
It doesn't make a lot of sense to him? Who is he? Who elected him dictator? What about it doesn't make sense?
When we have fighter aircraft patrolling the skies, tailing airliners and we're considering the possibility of shooting them out of the sky, why doesn't it make sense to arm pilots? Doesn't that give very responsible pilots another viable option for dealing with terrorism like we witnessed on Sept. 11?
This is about centralized command. It's about total control – the kind of control that didn't work on Sept. 11.
Where's the debate about this? The American people overwhelmingly believe arming pilots is the right thing to do. The pilots want that option. Why is it that Tom Ridge and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta are unilaterally making decisions like this without an open discussion of the pros and cons? Where's Congress when it comes time to reflect the will of the people on this issue?
Mineta says he would prefer the pilots use stun guns. Has he ever used a stun gun against an armed assailant? Does he know how close you have to get to use one? Are the fighter pilots going to set their missiles to "stun" the airliners that are in trouble? Or are they going to blow them out of the sky with all the passengers aboard?
What is Ridge's rationale for his decision? What is the basis for his conclusion that arming pilots "makes no sense"?
''Where do you stop?'' he says. If pilots carry guns, he said, railroad engineers and bus drivers could ask to do the same.
Well, they can ask. And maybe it's a good idea, and maybe it isn't. But, to my knowledge, buses and trains have not been used as weapons against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Airliners have been.
Tom Ridge is very good at showboating. He's very good at press conferences. He's very good at lulling Americans into a false sense of security in this post-Sept. 11 world. He's very good at suggesting Americans leave all security matters up to the big cheeses in the federal government – the very same federal government that, like it or not, allowed the terrible attacks last fall to succeed.
I say it's time to empower ordinary Americans to fight this war – ordinary responsible Americans like airline pilots.
Their duty is to save the lives of their passengers and crews. We ought to give them all the tools they need to do that. We shouldn't even think twice about providing them with handguns.
With the proper ammunition, firearms pose little threat to the plane itself. And when a plane is hijacked, drastic measures need to be considered by those in command.
Again, any airliner hijacked in domestic airspace today is going to be a candidate for a shoot-down by the military. Is it not better to take a clean shot at the hijackers themselves if the lives of all passengers and crew members can be spared?
I don't think there is any question about it. It makes perfect sense to me. And, judging from the polls, it makes perfect sense to the American people and the commanders and crew members.
President Bush needs to tell Ridge he's wrong about this. He needs to call him in to the Oval Office and straighten him out. He needs to arm the airliner pilots as a first step to securing our skies again. This is more important than all the other half-baked security measures currently undertaken by the federal government. This is where airline security should start.
If President Bush disagrees, let him set the example by getting rid of all the guns on Air Force One.
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It's beyond frustrating to have to listen to guys like Ridge and Mineta, who are serving in an allegedly conservative administration, bleat out the stupidest kind of PC nonsense. Even the Liberal DemocRATS couldn't do any worse than this on purpose.
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