The New Homeland Security

In a couple of my past articles, I’ve talked about the specter of terrorism floating above Obama’s head at all times, and how any attack could potentially derail his re-election campaign.  Ultimately, the possibility of another attack on the U.S. is downright likely, and falls to chance.  In a free society you can’t monitor everyone, and it’s not always easy to tell apart the people who are firebrand blowhards and the people who mean to make good on their threats.  To infringe on freedom of speech, or risk your country’s safety?  It’s not just a thin line, it’s a microscopic line, and no one has figured out how to walk it yet.

And then we have incidents like the near-bombing of the Northwest Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight this weekend by an alleged al-Qaeda operative.  The guy who supposedly tried to do it is a Nigerian radical Islamist Umar Farouk Adbulmutallab.  Adbulmutallab came from a well-off Nigerian family that realized a few weeks ago that he’d become radicalized in school and had made his way to a madrassa in Yemen.  They reported him to the authorities, and he was placed on the no-fly list.  But somehow, he got on a plane, and somehow, he got a multiple entry visa to the U.S., and somehow, he strapped an explosive to his leg and got on the plane with it.

So despite these multiple failures, what stopped him from blowing up the plane?  Jasper Schuringa.  Schuringa, on the opposite side of the plane, jumped over the other seats upon hearing a pop and smelling smoke, and he tackled Abdulmutallab, put him into a headlock, and dragged him to the front of the plane with Abdulmutallab’s pants down and leg on fire, and got him to the point where the flight attendants could grab the fire extinguisher and put his leg out.

I’m half-tempted to make the rest of this article a Schuringa-worshipping piece, in the spirit of the countless Chuck Norris sites.  Picture it!  “Schuringa doesn’t sleep.  He waits.”  But that’s not really the point.  Because other passengers jumped in too.  And if you look back, ever since the first three 9/11 attacks, people haven’t felt the same about Hijacking.  It is no longer an issue of, “Oh, they just want us for ransom, let’s let them land and hope for the best.”  Now, we associate hijacking with death.  Which is going to make it very difficult for one, two, or three terrorists to overtake a fully loaded plane. As soon as the Pentagon and World Trade Center were hit, the passengers of Flight 93 said, “Screw this,” and retook the plane, crashing it into a field.  When Richard Reid tried to shoe-bomb a plane, the other passengers tackled him and stopped him.

Which, I guess, in a way, is the back-up policy which may yet save our airlines and our lives.  The bureaucracy behind international travel is already hell, the lines at the airports are completely absurd, and there’s only so many types of screenings that TSA agents can without the terrorists finding a way around it.  It’s not fool-proof, and yeah, there’s still a possibility an attack is going to happen, but it’s nice to think that we are our own protection against terrorism.

Granted, if Abdulmutallab hadn’t botched the original lighting of the fuse, the plane might’ve blown up before any passengers could’ve stopped him, so let’s go ahead and agree with all analysts that things need to be fixed.  But my suggestion for the TSA?  Keep them from getting guns, knives and explosives on board.  If they try and take it with anything else, we, the passengers, will take care of it.  I’m not saying they should blow off their jobs, but there’s only so much protecting you can do before you’re just being totally inefficient.  The really dangerous stuff you should always be able to keep from getting on a plane, but everything else, the passengers should be able to overtake.  Now, at least, we know that we’re not getting landed in the Caymans to be saved by a SWAT team.

So maybe that’s our best bet against terrorism.  A cooperative effort amongst all of us.