| Wednesday,
July 25, 2007 We'll be heading down to the beach house where
I hope to finish dealing with the editor's notes on Inferno II. I'll catch
up with mail tonight.
Meanwhile, contemplate this:
Essay from Dave Mackett, President, Airline Pilots
Security Alliance (
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/07/16/a-pilot-on-airline-security/
)
Excerpt:
"Almost six years after 9/11, it is
inexcusable that — in an environment where TSA misses more than 90% of
weapons, RON aircraft are not secured, and ground employees are not
screened — fewer than 2% of our airliners have a team of armed pilots
aboard, fewer than 5% have air marshals, and the flight attendants have
no mandatory tactical or behavioral assessment training. $24 billion
dollars later, we are not materially safer, except in the areas of
intelligence that prevent an attack from getting to an airport. Once at
the airport, there is little reason to believe the attack won't
succeed."
Regards, Rick Hellewell
We have crippled the airlines, infuriated passengers, made air travel an
ordeal to be endured, and we are hardly safer than we were without any of
this nonsense.
Of course we have found means of employment for people whose abilities
make it unlikely that they could find any other useful work.
Does anyone think that the present TSA could prevent an intelligent
person from bringing down an airplane if the attacker was determined to do
it and expected to be killed in the attack? Our crack inspectors may be able
to prevent idiot attacks, but neither they nor people a lot smarter than
they can manage to save an airplane once a group with resources and
determination decide to destroy it.
Meanwhile the lobbies of airports, including those long security lines at
Dulles and Washington National, are enormously vulnerable to idiot attacks,
particularly if the attackers don't mind being killed; but in fact it
wouldn't be that hard to take out several hundred people at National on a
Friday afternoon (lots of important people in those lines!) without being
killed. I am sure any one of you can think of scenarios.
We need to rethink our anti-terrorist strategies and tactics with some
cold-eyed rationalism. What do the measures cost us? Including in national
dignity: at the moment the TSA is indistinguishable from an organization
whose major purpose is to humiliate the people and make certain Americans
understand they are subjects and not citizens. How easily can they be
circumvented by intelligent and determined people? What new targets do our
security measures create?
It is pretty clear that you can't stop intelligent and determined people
from destroying airplanes if the attacker doesn't mind being killed. You can
prevent the airplanes from being taken over and used as cruise missiles
against other targets. We all know how that can be done. Strong cockpit
doors, armed pilots, air marshals not dressed in 3-piece suits and short
haircuts on randomly selected flights. We all know how that can be done.
We need to assess the real threats and deal with those. When we do, we
will find that one of our more powerful weapons is our citizenry. If we
really believe in freedom and the republic, we would enlist the citizens in
this war on terror. Actually, we clearly don't believe in any of the ideals
we want to export to other nations. Instead, we disarm the citizens, express
horror at the notion that people can assist in protecting themselves, and we
allow conspirators to set up the citizens and then sue hell out of them. It
is as if we are determined to progress from republic to empire.
========
Now go read Fred on education.
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Desegregation.shtml As you know,
Fred and I are friends; and while I don't necessarily agree with everything
he says, I have considerable respect for him. We also grew up in the rural
South, and perhaps we have a different perspective from most. In any event,
what he says today is worth paying attention to.
Do we or do we not trust our citizens? Do we still believe, as Adams once
said, that in America we believe that each man is the best judge of his own
interest? We certainly do not act as if we believe it. Worse, we treat many
of our citizens -- "minorities" -- as an underclass, unable to know their
own interests, unable to better themselves through their own efforts, and
forever condemned to exist on the benefits of "entitlements." We don't make
them tug the forelock in deference to the bureaucrats, but if you visit the
offices of public largesse you will find something very like that...
If we do not believe that each man is the best judge of his own
interests, then who shall have the power to tell each of us what we want and
need? The technical term for those people is "rulers".
===================
My friend Bob Thompson asks me why I don't endorse Ron
Paul for President.
The short answer is that it's a bit early. There's little Congressman
Paul says that I disagree with in principle. I do not agree that the proper
course in Iraq is immediate and precipitate retreat. That may be the best
policy, but many people I respect do not agree; and it does not appear to me
that the Legions agree.
Before I would adopt an Iraq policy, I would want to know a great deal
more about what the Legions believe we must do. We sent them; we required
them to bleed and die in Mesopotamia, to see their comrades killed and
maimed, and to assume the burden of knowing they have brought more death and
destruction to Iraq than Saddam ever did. Surely we owe them a loud voice in
our future policies.
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