Monday, January 4, 2010

A Failed Anti-Terror Strategy

From Robert Spencer, interviewed at FrontPage Magazine, "A Failed Anti-Terror Strategy":

The chief lesson of the attempted jihad attack on Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day is that our entire anti-terror strategy is a huge and abject failure. Flight 253 revealed a massive failure not only of airline security procedures, but also of the larger strategy that America and the West has been pursuing against jihad terrorism.

As for airline security procedures, Abdulmutallab was able to get on the airplane without a passport, and with ingredients for an explosive that would have destroyed the plane and killed everyone in it.

TSA officials are busy tightening security procedures with new Abdulmutallab-inspired rules such as forcing passengers to stay in their seats for the last hour of the flight, but these new measures will do nothing to prevent another attack. One thing we have seen over the years since 9/11 is that airport security is always one step behind the jihadists: after jihadist Richard Reid attempted to set off a bomb hidden in his shoes, we all have to take off our shoes and send them through security scanners.

After a group of jihadists tried to sneak onto planes explosive chemicals hidden in drink bottles, we can’t carry drinks through airport security terminals. Because Abdulmutallab attempted his jihad attack just before the plane landed, now we can’t get up during the last hour of the flight.

The one thing that the TSA should have learned, but hasn’t, is that next time the jihadists will do something else, not just repeat what they did before. And even if every passenger were given a full body cavity search, they will find some way to get around it.

But attempt a new approach based on sensible profiling? The TSA would rather fold up shop altogether.
See also, Cold Fury, "Defeat is a State of Mind."

VIDEO CREDIT: Politico, "
Brennan: Deal ‘On the Table’ for Terror Suspect." (Via Memeorandum.)

2 comments:

SR said...

I wrote about this moron. Judas H Priest! Where do these libtards come from?

Dennis said...

SR,
Of the many years I spent in federal service I met many a good person who cared about their responsibility to the tax payer. Unfortunately most of those were not in Washington, D.C. I am not saying that there were or are not good people in D.C., but they are normally overpowered by the system and people moving from one agency to another for another promotion and who could care less about the mission and responsibilities of those respective organizations.
Having spent a number of times in D.C. as a subject matter "expert" I was always amazed at how hard it was to get a decision out of anyone that could be relied on. It was far easier for them to reorganize, say no instead of deal with the problem, push it off on to someone else, or create the look of action by creating another set of rules that did not address the problem.
It is even worse when you are dealing with a political appointee who has not had an original thought in their whole adult life. They are driven by ideology at the expense of addressing the problem and/or solving it.
Here you have an ideology that its adherents will follow no matter what the results. Not unlike AGW. It is not they who will be doing the dying, at least in the short run. Most of them graduated from prestigious colleges and universities without ever challenging their professors or anything they were required to read so to expect them to be good stewards of the people's business is not realistic.