I was listening to some fellow Hashers talking over dinner the other day. Amongst the group were some old friends revisiting Belgium on a holiday from Canada talking about the security restrictions on the flight over. "Hell, it was really inconvenient, we had to queue for hours, but if it makes us safe then I don't mind". Everyone around the table nodded and agreed. Unusually for me I decided not to point out how shortsighted, fatuous, complacent and downright ignorant that statement was.
The point I bit my tongue over and didn't voice is that now this potential avenue for death and destruction has been closed we shouldn't feel any more or less safe than before it was exposed - I am sure there are hundreds of ways to get explosives on-board a plane and if all we do is go around closing off each one AFTER it has been tried then we are doing nothing for security and peace of mind, all we are doing is playing the terrorists game .
I think what should be far more relevant to our security than how someone was planning to blow up an airplane is who is trying to do it, why they were doing it, and what in fact they were trying to do - blow up the plane or spread terror, or both? If you look at it in from these points of view the latest precautions have in fact put the terrorists ahead of the game. We had a real intelligence coup foiling the plot which is fantastic and shows what can be done, but then we played straight into the terrorists “Plan B” – “Create Chaos Anyway”.
It must be remembered that even after the arrests there are still approximately the same number of terrorists (plus or minus), there are still many different ways of achieving death and destruction. Even better, from the terrorist's point of view, the "West" is wasting a huge amount of time and money "closing the stable door after the horse has bolted". BA announced today that they reckon the “security precautions" cost them £41million. We are achieving nothing beneficial by being afraid and antagonising innocent people who could help expose the terrorists through our sabre rattling and downright aggression on the world and domestic stage.
An analogy... imagine you are in your house on a hot summer's day and suddenly a big wasp comes in through one of the many open windows and starts dive bombing you. What do you do? Close the window and kill the wasp - OK, but what about all the other windows in the house. Do you wait for a wasp to fly through each one before you close it? And even if you are proactive and go and close every window in the house immediately - what will happen then? You will get very hot; those windows were open for a purpose, to cool you down, and isn't this an over reaction any way? Surely a better approach would be to ask yourself what attracted the wasp's attention in the first place and put the lid back on the jam, Then see if you can find the nest that the wasp came from and if it is too close to the house, get an expert in to destroy it. The answer to this problem clearly is not to fall into a panic and order gallons of fly spray, anaphylactic shock treatments and then going out dressed in an NBC suit and poke every wasp nest you find with a stick every time a wasp comes out of it no matter how close to your home it is.
Isn't it obvious that a calm measured response that balances threat versus the cost of avoidance and identifying the cause rather than the symptom is the sensible way to tackle this or any other form of risk?
So why are we treating the terrorist situation in such a stupid way?
With the terrorists we are being remarkably linear in our approach. After Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, everyone had their shoes checked before boarding a plane. I nearly got myself arrested in Paris airport shortly after that incident when I happened to remark to a security guard when he asked me to take my shoes off that it was a good thing Mr Reid hadn't put the explosive in his underpants. Now we can't take liquid on board, not even a tube of toothpaste because of a threat from a liquid bomb that probably was never made and certainly never carried on board a plane.
Eric, a friend of mine, pointed out the difficulties that would occur if someone were to take a breast implant, remove the silicone and replace it with a liquid explosive. It doesn't matter how viable a threat such a bomb is, all the terrorist would need to do would be leave this in a 'bomb factory' and then if the police to do raid the place and stumble across it they can offset the loss of the bomb material with the schadenfreude of watching the ensuing chaos. Can you imagine the scenes in the airports... and the dilemma... would it be fair just to examine the breasts of buxom women, or should all women have their boobs squeezed - but isn't that discrimination, shouldn't men be checked too, just to be fair and unbiased? And what do you do when you do find someone with breast implants - take her out to the runway and perform a 'controlled explosion'?
I think we need to start to take a holistic approach to the terrorist issue and employ a bit of lateral thinking, and behave in the same way as we would when tackling the wasp problem. We must never forget that not all Muslims want us dead or want to kill themselves in a suicide attack on us. The vast majority want to just get on with their lives and live according to their customs and beliefs. What we must do is identify those that do want to carry out terrorist atrocities and then ask ourselves why these particular ones people want to kill us, where are they coming from and why they are getting away with this outrageous behaviour. Focusing on their weapons alone, in the airports is far far too late and far too reactive. I know this sounds like the NRA slogan “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” but on this occasion I do think this kind of thinking is useful.
As well as being linear in our approach we are also being superficial and, lets face it, racist.
When the West looks at one of these Muslim terrorists as reported in the media they encouraged to just see the surface; the long wispy beard, the turban, the long flowing robe and the slightly odd loose-limbed way of moving (just think of the famous clip of Osma Bin Laden walking down that rocky slope). When the media shows us traditional Muslims going about their business we see the same thing and are not invited or encouraged to look any further.
It is ridiculous to assume all these people are out of the same mould because they all look and behave 'oddly' (to our eyes). Yet it seems to be an accepted truism that anyone who likes to follow traditional modes of dress must be a bit funny in the head or even a total lunatic - but what about Morris Dancers? ...Oh, yes, well, perhaps that is the exception that proves the rule.
Like some of you reading this rant, I have been lucky enough to spent many years in Muslim countries including Oman, Indonesia and Malaysia and I've got to know many Muslims and have counted some of them as good friends. Some of these people dressed differently from me, most wouldn't eat some of the food I eat or share a beer with me, and some even had a strange limp-wristed way of shaking hands but in no way were these people inherently stupid or in any way inferior to me. A deep interest in religion and wanting to live one's life along traditional lines laid out in a holy book is not a sign of stupidity, just look at Sir Isaac Newton who was a deeply devout man, and Gregor Mendel the father of genetics who was a Moravian monk to name just two.
We are fooling ourselves when we think that the (a) all Muslims are potential terrorists and (b) the terrorists are ignorant and more than slightly daft. Both these precepts are dangerous and very very wrong. Muslims are just as intelligent or stupid as Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sun Worshippers or whatever and just because they look different and behave differently doesn't mean to say they are in some way inferior and need of being 'westernised', 'liberated' or 'democratised' or made to be more like "us" (or is that "U.S."?).
Most importantly though the terrorists we are facing today are sophisticated and Machiavellian in their ability to manipulate public opinion both in their own communities and in the "West". We need to stop playing their game and start playing our own. We need to stop panicking and running round in circles screaming whilst waving our hands in front of our faces like some aged aunt when bothered by a wasp.
Fortunately I am not original in my thoughts, there are plenty of other people out there who think the way I do and there are some excellent blogs and comments on this subject on the web already. Have a read of this Kung Fu Monkey - Wait aren't you scared? and look at this cartoon.
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