Self Restraint is the Best Security

By Philip Giraldi • September 12, 2011, 2:25 PM

Do you remember traveling with your young children and urging them to “hold it” for a while in order to delay all too frequent bathroom stops? Well, travel by air now has its own version of that. I confess to having mixed feelings, but mostly negative, about yesterday’s report of two airliners being shadowed by F-16 fighter jets on 9/11 because cabin crew had observed five passengers spending too much time in the plane’s lavatories. When the planes landed they were parked in remote areas in the airports (Detroit and New York), boarded by SWAT teams, searched, and the five suspects were led away in handcuffs. They were all later released with no charges filed against them. While on one hand I do like to see airline personnel being vigilant just in case a genuine terrorist incident were actually developing, the thought that frequently trips to the bathroom on an airplane can be grounds for extraordinary action by the authorities is somewhat Orwellian. Many people are nervous air travelers and, derived from my own experience on planes, I would observe that one frequently notes a passenger or several passengers who are up and down the aisle all through the flight. I also wonder what the ethnicity of the suspects was – were they guilty of being swarthy AND going to the toilet too often?

I can only speculate on what scrambling fighter planes to accompany a passenger aircraft is actually meant to accomplish. Would they shoot it down? Do they have orders to do so? Who would give such an order and on what basis? There is so much we do not know about what the Department of Homeland Security believes itself empowered to do.

8 Responses to Self Restraint is the Best Security

Jim Dooley says:

September 12, 2011 at 3:21 pm

Potential shades of KAL 007; and anyone who thinks it couldn’t happen probably didn’t think TSA robots would have the judgment to pass old ladies through the gate without having to remove their diapers. All it takes is a little ambiguity, a serious case of what-ifism, and the bad judgement that abounds in the work-a-day world of security and you can wind up creating a really bad day for just plain folks.

TomB says:

September 12, 2011 at 6:31 pm

The thing that gets me is what I at least can only perceive as a kind of schizophrenia on the part of the public. On the one hand it can seem that damn near everyone has at least a decent level of scorn for all the security stuff everywhere, and my sense is that there’s a limit to the degree to which the government can increase or add to those measures that are intrusive, delaying or etc.

On the other hand where there’s not positive pride over our being at a war that can never be over, at best there’s a kind of resigned acceptance of it. And, needless to say, no real linking of the idea that if we weren’t at war we would be far safer, with less security.

It’s just frustrating the utter apparent acceptance of the idea that we are at war for … no real reason at all. Simply because … “they don’t like who we are.”

I dunno; maybe this is indeed the worst thing that Mr. Bush has bequeathed us. And, predictably, it’s a lie. It’s like he found the switch to some deep human psychological glitch resulting in an almost science fiction-like scenario: A veritable planet of people, ordering their lives evermore according to an utterly unexamined premise to the effect that, for no real reason whatsoever, they are the object of some vast, amorphous, unthinking, purposeless hatred.

The only answer to which, of course, is indeed to accept that the natural and eternal state of things is indeed to be at war, with the best of humans thereby being those who are most enthused about waging same.

How anti-thetical to the founding thesis of this country. How … Roman.

Thomas O. Meehan says:

September 12, 2011 at 8:06 pm

Aspects of this are not new. The Southern Pacific Railroad insisted on disarming all travelers and holding their weapons upon repayment of a fee. When the train robbers stopped the train the conductor with the key to the lock box hid in the express car leaving the passengers to their fate.

Sound familiar?

blair says:

September 13, 2011 at 5:22 am

TomB: “A veritable planet of people, ordering their lives evermore according to an utterly unexamined premise to the effect that, for no real reason whatsoever, they are the object of some vast, amorphous, unthinking, purposeless hatred. ”

The film is called “Brazil” (directed by Terry Gilliam, 1985). Phil’s on top of things, as usual.

Kelley says:

September 13, 2011 at 9:00 am

Phil, you said, “I confess to having mixed feelings, but mostly negative, about yesterday’s report of two airliners being shadowed by F-16 fighter jets on 9/11 because cabin crew had observed five passengers spending too much time in the plane’s lavatories.”

I confess to being outraged.

You ask what are the fighter jets supposed to be doing?

I ask, why handcuff these poor fools — had they exhibited belligerent behavior previous to that?

Why is flying anywhere akin to logrolling — one unlucky move, a word under the breath, two many trips to the bathroom, and you are thrown to the alligators, pegged for a terrorist?

you’re treated like sheeple and then asked to pay out of your a– for the privilege

as dirty harry would always say, “swell.”

tbraton says:

September 13, 2011 at 10:57 am

“I can only speculate on what scrambling fighter planes to accompany a passenger aircraft is actually meant to accomplish. Would they shoot it down? Do they have orders to do so? ”

Back on 9/11/01, when I heard the account of the hi-jacked planes that crashed into the WTC and Pentagon , the first thought that occurred to me was how that could happen. I thought there was a policy of keeping the door to the cockpit locked once the plane took off. Later, upon reading the 9/11 Commission Report, I discovered that my memory was still working and that the policy had been in place for years but had been generally ignored. One of the major changes resulting from 9/11 was to reinforce the doors to airliner cockpits and install heavier locks and restate the policy of keeping the door locked at all times while the plane was in flight. Since that is the case, I agree with you PG and wonder why it was necessary to scramble the jets. I guess this means that all those billions of dollars spent to make the cockpits more secure were wasted.

BTW I have always thought that, if we had had a national security adviser with a wee more brains than Condi Rice, some kind of surretitious security advisory would have gone out to the airlines after the CIA report was sent to the White House in early August 2001 warning of impending attack by Al Qaeda “possibly involving aircraft” and the devastation wrought on 9/11 could have been avoided.

Crikey says:

September 13, 2011 at 12:52 pm

Phil doesn’t seem to appreciate the vital role played by the Air National Guard in the Global War on Diarrhea and Frequent Urination.

Thomas O. Meehan says:

September 14, 2011 at 12:55 pm

My memory is far from infallible but I believe that as a result of 9/11, the authorization process for shooting down an airliner has been streamlined to a point where it’s a very really possibility on short notice.

We were “Lucky” in 9/11 that no 747′s were hijacked. Shooting one down, causing the flaming disintegration of such a large plane over a populated area would have been even more disastrous than the destruction of the towers. And of course a full 747 holds a great many more passengers, so the loss of these alone would have been a major tragedy.

State of the Union

MORE IN THIS BLOG

Self Restraint is the Best Security

MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR

8 Responses to Self Restraint is the Best Security

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Get updates from The American Conservative

Help Us Grow

State of The Union

BLOGS

CATEGORIES

ABOUT US

THE MAGAZINE