Don't Just React to Threats, Identify Them
With lineups and delays approaching hysteria at airports over the Christmas Day underwear bomber close call, a couple of ways to cut down terror in the air come to mind.
First, it should be a given that various intelligence agencies communicate with one another about terror suspects. In the case of Umar Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian who’s bid to blow up the Northwest Airlines plane over Detroit was foiled by passengers, there was inadequate and negligent inter-agency communication.
That certainly will be improved, according to President Barack Obama who now says the process as it exists is “unacceptable” – after reversing his initial view that Abdulmutallab was “an isolated extremist.” Obama will now “not rest until we find all who were involved.”
Meanwhile, the suspect has lawyers who advise him to tell authorities nothing.
The first of two measures that would improve air safety is a clear dictum that anyone who has had anything to do with an al-Qaeda training camp anywhere in the world, be banned from boarding any aircraft destined for the U.S.
Yemen is the al-Qaeda country of choice at the moment, and one can assume that U.S. intelligence has a pretty good idea of what’s going on there. At least one hopes this is the case, in this ninth year after 9/11.
In most (if not all) terrorist incidents in the U.S., both actual and aborted, there’ve been al-Qaeda links. So banning anyone with connections or exposure to al-Qaeda from flying commercially into the U.S. is so obvious as to be a no-brainer.
The second measure to make flying safer would be to issue every passenger boarding a plane a box cutter. The sounds facetious, and it is, but it would also ensure that if a terrorist on board – or an extremist nutbar – tried to commandeer the plane, a few hundred passengers with box cutters would undoubtedly cope with the situation.
After 9/11, when Canada officially rejected the idea of armed air marshals on flights, the Chretien government assured Canadians that if an aircraft were hijacked and acted in a threatening manner, the plane could be shot down. Surely, armed air marshals on board would be preferable to shooting our own planes down.
As it is, our airport security tends to react to whatever the most recent threat is. The infamous shoe-bomber of 2001 resulted in shoes being removed at passenger check points. One wonders if removing one’s underwear will be the next airport security measure, thanks to Abdulmutallab.
As well as developing technology to detect weapons and explosives in luggage, the time is long overdue to develop what could be called “terrorist profiling.” That is, training people to recognize and identify suspicious individuals who might be a threat.
The Israelis have made this latter aspect into an art form that has resulted in no attacks on Israeli aircraft or airports since 1972 – and Israel is the world’s most targeted county for terrorists, even more than the U.S.
Distressing to some is President Obama’s reluctance to use the word “terrorist” or “jihadist.” Instead he prefers “extremist,” which is misleading. In creates doubts, as expressed by Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post, that there is in Obama. “a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension” about the nature of terrorism.