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Tuesday, December 29, 2009 |
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Dire Prediction |
I`m not usually in the business of predicting future events but do have a history of doing so correctly (at times of course) i.e. as a freshman in high school predicting that newly elected POTUS Bill Clinton would be impeached, and predicting that selling gold and investing as much money as I could in the stock market when it was at its lowest point this year was a good idea. Of course I`m sure I have probably made more incorrect predictions than correct ones but who`s counting?
I am about to make a prediction now that will come true in the next five years (I say five even though my gut tells me two. I want to give myself some wiggle room though). Sometime in the next five years, at a major airport in the United States, a terrorist will be dropped off at the passenger drop off and will then walk in the airport. He will walk right past check-in to the security check. At the security check (if he can wait that long unlike most terrorists who get so excited to blow themselves up they do it prematurely) he will detonate himself and kill all the TSA workers and probably a couple hundred civilians. The blast will destroy all the security equipment and seriously damage the structure of that wing of the airport putting a complete halt to all air traffic at the airport for at least a week. If it is LAX, La Guardia, Dulles, O`Hare or one of the many other major airports all air traffic will be delayed stranding thousands of travelers. Billions of dollars will again be lost due to severely restricted air travel and crazy new security checks once air travel resumes. Thousands of new security personnel will have to be hired, new body scan equipment will be purchased, and the time needed to arrive at the airport in order to make it through security in time to reach your gate will increase by at least one hour.
In fact if terrorists really wanted to halt America and shake the world they would conduct a multi-Airport attack like the one I describe above. The fact that this hasn`t happened already is solely by the grace of God.
There are several solutions to preventing this kind of attack though, none of which are particularly PC but if you would rather live and offend someone’s sensibilities than die I suggest you at least consider what I have to say. First we could profile passengers. The majority of terrorist acts are perpetrated by 18-40 year old Muslim men of all races but for the most part if you see one you know one. In the case that you aren`t sure by looks alone but the person has a typically Muslim sounding name like Muhammed Ali, then they are just going to have to wait a bit longer during their more thorough security check. Michael Chertoff, former head of Homeland Security, in an interview today said that profiling doesn’t work because terrorists don’t always look traditionally like we think they should i.e. Osama Bin Laden. In addition he said that terrorists know we are on the lookout for what we think they should look like so they will purposely try to fit in with everyone else. Perhaps both of those ideas are true, however, as a first step we need to start profiling now as simply one way of deterring terrorism.
Secondly we could invest in more bomb sniffing dogs, bodyscan x-ray machines, and better security equipment in general. The rub in this part of the solution is that it costs a lot and still allows would-be terrorists to get close to other people. However, if we could employ these measures much like the Israelis do at the Erez crossing, the only crossing where Palestinians cross from Gaza into Israel, we would be much safer. The way the Israelis conduct the Erez crossing is above and behind protective glass etc. and communicate with the Palestinians as they go through the human free security checks solely by a PA system. This eliminates the possibility of mass casualties at any particular checkpoint. The Palestinians and the liberal elitists complain that it is inhumane but that is of minor importance when you are still alive and are saving the lives of other innocent human beings who simply want to fly to back home for the holidays.
In the end there is no full-proof way to prevent terrorism at our airports other than going to kill terrorists where they come from. Purposely targeting their ringleaders as we are currently doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is also a great way to hamper their abilities since they aren’t into the whole dying and going to paradise thing like they advocate to their followers. Showing them we mean business and that we won’t let politically correct bull crap get in the way will also prove to them that we are finally taking terrorism seriously. Until then it is apparent we only view terrorism as a minor annoyance.
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