Here’s an interesting, and disturbing article claiming that the powers that be are now concerned that Al Qaeda already has trained pilots working for foreign airlines. Just in case you can’t tell, this makes me…mad.
Here’s the key point:
Reinforced cockpit doors intended to thwart hijackers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks would now protect any terrorist pilot at the controls, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
After 911, we didn’t change our (failed) philosophy toward aircraft hijacking–we just reinforced it and made it all the more idiotic and potentially disastrous.
Before 911 we were treated as sheep–if your airliner is hijacked, assume a docile position, let the grownups handle it, and hope that everything comes out all right.
The only lesson that our fearless/feckless leaders seemed to learn from that experience was that they didn’t do enough to disarm the sheep, and the wolves in sheep’s clothing. They stepped up the faux-sheep disarming campaign, carrying it out to the level of nose-hair clippers, further increasing the annoyance and waste of time, on the assumption (regrettably not unfounded) that most people would associate annoyance with safety. They decided that even those responsible for the safety of the plane and passengers wouldn’t be allowed to arm themselves, relying instead on the notion that the pilots should be vaulted up in the cockpit so that no one could take it over.
Thankfully, due to a public uproar and a response from some of the few people in Congress with intact minds, the pilots were finally allowed to carry, but the administration continued to drag its feet for months in actually implementing it.
But now we learn the (what should have been obvious) folly in our approach. What if the pilot is the hijacker? What if the pilot is the terrorist? All he has to do is disable his flight crew (or better yet, ensure that they’re already on his side) and he can deliver his passengers to their deaths while immolating another skyscraper, or nuclear plant, or government facility unmolested, thanks to the armored door, which prevents anyone of the possibly hundreds of people on the plane from preventing it. Now the only solution is to shoot it down, with all aboard.
D’oh!!!
Brilliant.
Consider an alternate scenario.
We stop wasting peoples’ time looking for tweezers, and let them take care of themselves, which ultimately they already have to do, given the reality that the police cannot be everywhere everywhen.
Yes, occasionally a nutball will get on a plane with a weapon, but he will be subduable (as the Flight 93 people proved) and almost certainly subdued. If he’s subdued prior to his access to the cockpit (which would have happened with Flight 93, and indeed all other flights that day had they realized the stakes), they don’t suffer the fate of Flight 93–they get the aircraft safely to the ground, and only lose those few passengers who are overcome before the passengers (aka air militia) realize what’s happening.
He doesn’t get into the cockpit, not because it’s armored and locked, but because no one lets him in there. And if he somehow gets in there nonetheless, as occurred in Flight 93, in the last extreme, the militia can still ultimately break in and prevent his fiendish mission, even if it costs them their lives.
But this administration continues to treat the people like a herd, rather than a pack, and so in the next incident, they may leave us even more defenseless, not only unable to save themselves, but this time, unable to save the White House or the Capitol Building.
And if the residents of those locations die, they’ll fully deserve it for their elite arrogance and insufficient faith in the ability of free men to defend themselves and their country.