Not what, who

Once again we see the dire consequences of political correctness, of "open palm" diplomacy, of nuanced response to root causes, of liberalism itself.  A crotch bomber nearly succeeds in sending hundreds to a fiery death.  Our response as usual?  Make everyone suffer.  Sit down, shut up, everything stowed, hands where we can see them.  Up against the wall, grandma!

Once again we outlaw the rocks, not watch and intercept the throwers.  Once again, it will fail to address the problem, that our officials are not allowed to use proven methods like that of the Israelis.  They focus on who, not what, and the threat of retaliation is unsaid, understood, and respected, at least while there are so many softer targets available in other countries.

Imagine if we had two airlines.  To fly Diogenes Air, you have to apply for membership.  Your criminal record will be checked.  Your credit report will be examined. You have to be accepted.  You have to file a flight plan and explain any unusual aspects in advance, like why are you only flying one way?  More questions are asked if the travel is sudden.

To fly Air Napolitano, anything goes, just submit to 100% screening, 10% pat downs, 1% strip searches, even an occasional cavity search.  The lines are long, but it's half the fare, $300 to Dallas instead of $750 on Diogenes.

Which would you rather fly?

Comments

[Hiram]

This is an area where market economics can and does work. Effectively, for the purposes of this posting, we do have two airlines, one with high security and one with, shall we say, medium security. The high security airline consists of the world's fleet of private jets. The service is secure, but incidentally not quite as safe as the commercial airlines.

So each of us has a choice every time we fly. We could hire a private jet, at much higher expense, from Air Diogenes, and know that we will not be attacked by terrorists but risk flying into a mountain, or we could take Air Napitalano, and take our chances with terrorists in a safer plane. As market participants, the choice as always, is ours.

[Hiram]

In Israel, where terrorism is a day to day reality, they don't engage in a political hissy fit when an act of terrorism occurs, or as in this case, thwarted.

El Al, the Israeli airline, has very high security, I am told. Customers are individually checked and interrogated in a very detailed way. This seems to work for them, but it's also the case that El Al, is a state subsidized airline that has relatively few flights, basically to Israel and back. As far as I know, there is nothing at all, at least no legal regulation, prohibiting commercial airlines from using similar enhanced security practices. The question is one of markets and economics. Flights would become more expensive, and so because of the tight profit margins airlines have, marginally profit flights would be eliminated, and the ones that are retained would become more expensive. It's very unlikely, for example, that there would be flights to Dallas, at least at a cost most people could afford.

[The Big Stink]

In March of this year Ms Naplitano offered her first "state of Homeland Security address" in which she called terrorism a "man-made disaster." As well, she warned the next terrorist attack could come at the hands of returning Iraq and Afghan soldier who would form right-wing militias intent on terrorizing and overthrowing our government.

These hippies are now in the cockpit. Brace for impact!

[Hiram]

While we have indeed seen military related terrorism, on the whole, what we should expect from terrorists is the unexpected. The Timothy McVeigh terrorism scenario will remain the exception rather than the rule.

[J. Ewing]

The question is not which should you fly, because the choice depends on the actual price differential. I HATE to fly under the new rules, but occasionally there is no other choice. A personal aircraft is financially out of reach for me. The question here is one of how much government interference should be allowed in the decisions that airlines and passengers could better make by themselves? I suspect there are millions of potential customers who would sign up for a flight where they could be pre-screened, based on a background check and a positive ID at the gate, rather than the humiliation and rampant stupidity of the TSA's approach (or the private equivalent thereof). Unfortunately, government takes its usual ham-fisted approach to a problem, and produces little security but lots of expensive little actions. I wonder, how much has air travel declined since the TSA became fully operational?

[Hiram]

"The question here is one of how much government interference should be allowed in the decisions that airlines and passengers could better make by themselves?"

A nice theoretical point, but not a practical one. I don't think we will constructing new airports so that customers can have a choice between high and low security check-in procedures. As for pre-screening, while it might be more convenient, I have a hard time in believing that it would actually be safer than security checks at the gate. In terms of Speed's metaphor, it would be nice to eliminate the rock throwers, but our immediate concern is the rocks.

[Lassie]

I also question government interference and authority in US airline security, as Ed Morrissey points out:

"The TSA reference doesn’t spring so much from the botched attack itself, which was hardly the fault of TSA. After all, the US does not provide security in Lagos, Nigeria, or in Amsterdam. But the TSA’s Chicken Little responses — banning laptops and requiring people to remain seated in the final 60 minutes of the flight — showed an amazing ignorance of the actual incident. None of the measures would have stopped Umar Abdulmutallab from detonating his underwear bomb."

[Hiram]

While it's important to react to the specific incident, a more wide ranging and comprehensive is always needed. We simply cannot expect terrorists to repeat tactics, particularly tactics that have failed.

To paraphrase Rahm Emmanuel, it's important not to let a crisis go to waste. If nothing else, the recent incident is a wake up to review all security procedures, and where appropriate, to implement needed security measures even if they are not directly related to the particular incident at hand.

[J. Ewing]

I like the metaphor of stopping the rocks because we cannot stop the rock-throwers, but it is exactly backwards, in my opinion. The problem is that rocks are everywhere, and people who can responsibly use rocks are, what, 99.999% of the folks? Why should everyone lose their rocks for the one or two people who we KNOW are rock-throwers? The TSA approach is giving the terrorists the win. We've cut down on our own freedoms.

Let's look at this without the analogy. Since the shoe bomber episode of 2001, more than 5.6 billion US air passengers-- almost the world's population, have had to remove their shoes to get on a plane. Not one shoe bombing has even been attempted in that time. If we had tracked shoe bomber Richard Reid-- one person-- rather than checking 12 billion shoes, we could have saved a lot of money, time, trouble, frustration, and false senses of danger, without affecting the outcome one bit.