And the amazingly overblown reaction to incidents like the shoe bomber and the bags of clay provide a really clear message to the Islamic terrorists on how to win this war they started:
Spend us to death.
Here's a couple of scenarios and likely outcomes to consider. These, of course, are not endorsements of terror tactics and I imagine the capable terrorists have already thought of them, so I doubt there's any harm throwing the scenarios out here.
Tactic: Six Islamic terrorists fan out to six cities across the U.S. Each terrorist has a suitcase full of explosives. They all get tickets for flights taking off during a three-hour timeframe. Each terrorist goes to the counter, gets his boarding pass, checks his bags and then leaves the airport.
Immediate Result: Either the bombs get on the planes and blow them up or one or more are detected by TSA scanners (yeah, right).
Ultimate Result: As soon as one of the bombs is detected or explodes, the TSA goes on high alert. The other bombs then blow up or are detected ... all planes are grounded ... air traffic shuts down for another few days ... people stop flying again ... security gets even more strict ... billions more spent on the TSA ... airlines lose more money ... economy sinks again ...
Tactic: Six Islamic terrorists go to six cities and visit six big shopping malls at roughly the same time sometime during the Christmas shopping season. Each terrorist has a backpack full of explosives. Each backpack is left in a food-court garbage can at lunchtime.
Immediate Result: The bombs go off. Some people are killed; we see immediately that this is a coordinated attack.
Ultimate Result: All retail stores in the U.S. closed for three days ... federal government quickly spends billions to create SSA (Shopping Security Administration) ... metal detectors ordered installed at all U.S. shopping centers ... each shopper searched upon entry ... people stop shopping ... major retailers go out of business ... economy tanks.
Article comments
1 - Cap'n Ken
And, of course, now the feds are talking about how not everybody gets screened (gasp!) and that we're really not safe (double gasp!!!) ... so they can get more money.
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAH3L85WLD.html
2 - Al Barger
Right on target, Cap'n. It's much more expensive to combat terrorist tactics than to commit them, even if we were acting smart. Doing this dumb stuff, however, exponentially increases the financial and other costs to us.
On the other hand, using the kinds of obvious selective filtering you imply risks you being called a RACIST XENOPHOBE, etc. Only a few of us seem at this point to be willing to take the brunt of such abuse.
However, I suspect that one or two incidents such as you envision would overwhelm many people's minor emotional sensitivities. I just hope that the emotional stuff doesn't swing too far the other way, and cause us to overcompensate.
A lot of this, however, may be avoided if we take the fight to them, as we did in Iraq.
3 - kara
Al,
Agreed with your point about the risks of being called racist, but at the same time, if the IRA had committed the acts of September 11, I'd fully expect (and would probably receive) harsher scrutiny at airports than my non-Caucasian coutrymen.
It amazes me that this is such a hard concept for some folks to grasp.
4 - Cap'n Ken
Sadly, I think the problem lies more with the idiot American public wanting to "feel safe", which is why any of the types of acts I described would be met with the kind of reactionary, expensive, "feel good" measures I talked about.
A third tactic for the radical Muslims among you: Six terrorists in six cities each with a van full of explosives. Pull up next to six school buses full of children ...