In this case, Christopher Hitchens has it exactly right:
What nobody in authority thinks us grown-up enough to be told is this: We had better get used to being the civilians who are under a relentless and planned assault from the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims. Our civil aviation is only the most psychologically frightening symbol of a plethora of potential targets. The future murderers will generally not be from refugee camps or slums (though they are being indoctrinated every day in our prisons); they will frequently be from educated backgrounds, and they will often not be from overseas at all. They are already in our suburbs and even in our military. We can expect to take casualties. The battle will go on for the rest of our lives. Those who plan our destruction know what they want, and they are prepared to kill and die for it. Those who don't get the point prefer to whine about "endless war," accidentally speaking the truth about something of which the attempted Christmas bombing over Michigan was only a foretaste. While we fumble with bureaucracy and euphemism, they are flying high.
3 comments:
I like Hitchens and mostly agree with what he has to say. But it seems like he is lumping all Muslims into one bag and that is wrong. In some ways they are like a lot of religions where you have a lot of people on the fringe. You only have to look at the Fundies here. We could eliminate a lot of problems with airport security if we followed Isralie methods.
We are also wrong for fighting this as some sort of war. These people are criminals and we should treat them as such.
I don't know if they recinded the rule about staying in your seat for the last hour of the flight. Like a bomber is waiting for that last hour. How inane.
or if you have a 5 year old who just has to go 45 minutes before landing.
Ultimately, we could make the planes nearly invulnerable with full body scans at an enormous cost. And we still wouldn't be "safe".
My wife's sister recently escorted a Downs Syndrome kid on a flight. Security pulled the kid out and searched him as one of their random picks. That pretty much sums up airport security.
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