| We have no less than unadulterated idiots in charge of airport
security.
You say, "What is it this time, Williams?"
Last month, while boarding a Midwest Express flight to
Milwaukee, former Vice President Al Gore was pulled aside at the boarding
gate. He was frisked and his carry-on luggage searched. The entire flight
was boarded before Reagan National Airport guards concluded that Al Gore
posed no hijacking threat. It was more of the same on his return flight to
Washington.
How might we reconcile these security measures with any
semblance of intelligence? Did the airport security people think Al Gore
harbored lingering anger from his controversial election defeat at the hands
of George Bush and became an Al Qaeda operative out to destroy the United
States? Could it be that security people think Americans will put up with
anything, no matter how stupid, as long as there's equality in treatment? If
you think that the answer is no, try some responses from the nation's
leaders.
Human Events (June 24) interviewed several U.S. senators asking
them: "Al Gore was searched twice last week in U.S. airports. Isn't that a
waste of limited resources?" Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., replied: "No, they
do that to anybody. It's a random check." When asked the same question, Sen.
John Breaux, D-La., said, "No, I think everyone ought to be subjected to the
same rules, whether it's a member of Congress or a member of the Senate, all
public officials." Sen. Jim Bunning, R.-Ky., answered: "I've been searched
20 times. ... That's the way it should be. We shouldn't be exempt from
that."
How might we explain these senatorial responses? Is there the
remotest chance that a senator might be a terrorist hijacker? I'm guessing
that the average person would say no; senators confine their terrorism to
our pocketbooks. What about the chances that a terrorist has asked a senator
to carry on board a weapon that can be used to hijack an airliner? Again,
I'm guessing the average sane person would answer no. But there's another
possible explanation that should never be ruled out: When looking for a
reason why people do certain things, never rule out sheer stupidity.
What makes the Al Gore frisk and search even more stupid is the
fact that he was traveling from and to Reagan National Airport. All flights
in and out of metropolitan Washington's Reagan National airport are
accompanied by armed sky marshals.
Columnist Ann Coulter, writing in the same issue of Human
Events, puts her finger on it: "Searching Al Gore is a purely religious act.
It's purposeless, fetishistic performance of rituals in accordance with the
civic religion of liberalism."
This religion of liberalism that's a part of the Bush
administration has the potential to produce great death and destruction in
our nation. A few weeks ago, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate
Judiciary Committee that "immediately after Sept. 11," when the FBI was
trying to stop "a second wave of terrorists out there," FBI policy was this,
according to Mueller: "We're not looking for individuals of any particular
religion or from any particular country." If the director is telling the
truth, he ought to be fired for aggravated stupidity and endangering the
lives of Americans.
One of the best immediate things that Bush can do for the fight
against terrorism is to fire both Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta
and his undersecretary, John Magaw, both of whom have waged war against a
pilot's right to carry firearms as a last-ditch means to protect his plane
and passengers. If F-16s are ever scrambled to shoot down a commercial
airliner, Mineta and Magaw have a lot of explaining to do, and so does
President Bush.
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