Of Car Bombs and Consequences
By John H Huey on May 6, 2010 at 11:30 AM in Current Affairs
Editor’s Note: John Huey, a security professional involved with aviation security issues for over 28 years, has now published several articles for NoQuarter. Learn more background details about John Huey and his constructive critiques in his first post published at NoQuarterUSA.net on January 5, 2010: “From An Insider: The Need for Risk-Analysis, High-Threat Screening Lanes & Checkpoints” and in all posts by Mr. Huey.
Yet another incompetent bomber, Faisal Shahzad, decided to betray his country in a most heinous way but was thwarted by inadequate training, lousy CONOPS, a failure of nerve, some sharp-eyed New Yorkers and, at the last minute, by a dash to his JFK departure gate by some belatedly alerted CBP officers.
The details of this attempt will be debated in the coming weeks as will his ability to ditch his FBI tail and the total failure of the current pre-board watch list system. Robert Gibbs toughing it out in the White House press room won’t be enough to explain this one and Congress, in its oversight role, will be weighing in shortly.
We have been lucky (and only barely lucky) that the recent attacks have been unsuccessful due to incompetent bomb making.
Unlike 9/11, this has given us room for more debate and time to consider our options. Successful attacks put us in a box. We can now be certain that successful attacks will come and come soon.
Short of a thermonuclear strike, our radical Islamic enemy has no means of inflicting actual physical damage that will literally destroy enough of our infrastructure to bring us down. They do, however, have the means of disruption of transportation and public assembly that could, conceivably, result in an overreaction by government that could spark social strife and undermine our democratic institutions.
I am thinking of my experiences, over many years, in Israel and about the awareness they have developed of patterns of attack, disruption and mass terror as well as the institution of an effective system to interdict and mitigate threat. They have managed to do this and preserve a robust and thriving democracy at the same time.
This is fairly remarkable when you consider that they have universal conscription, tight border and transit controls (including vehicle checkpoints) in many areas of their country, an airport check-in routine that can take over three hours, police, uniforms and guns everywhere (just walk around Jerusalem sometime) and a true security state where national security is the beginning and end of all social and political debates.
This regime only works in a democratic society with a common purpose under the clear threat of extinction. There is also the force of shared history and the ever present consciousness of the Holocaust. The bottom line is that since 1948 they have been under continual mortal threat and have developed mechanisms, over 62 years, to deal with this.
The Israeli-style security state is in no way adaptable to American democracy. We just would not tolerate it, and the resulting polarization of left and right could very well lead to civil unrest as well as economic and social disruption that would make 1968 look like a proverbial walk in the park.
Given our domestic political realities, what could be done, within the Constitution, to mitigate the ever-growing threat without militarizing society as a whole and moving toward a security/police state?
Profiling is NOT illegal if not based solely on ethnic and religious factors. It is a political issue, but no aviation security regime or border control system that can truly mitigate this threat is possible without it. Not knowing that one of our citizens is wandering North Waziristan for months at a time and not finding out (definitively) what he/she is up to is no longer acceptable.
Questioning U.S. citizens upon entry to the United States after overseas travel is NOT illegal. You just need to ask the right questions of more people. I have personally been interviewed, in the past, by USG officials inquiring about my travel patterns (selling x-ray machines has never been perceived as a threat, by the way) and know, from personal experience, that the statutory authority exists to do this.
A national identity card (just look in your wallet, if you have a drivers license linked to a bar code, you already have a crude one) linked to biometric ID would speed travel for all and allow for a more efficient “sorting” process at our airports and international gateways.
As many of you know, national ID is just about universal everywhere in the world. Countries such as Canada, Germany, Finland, Sweden and (as of 2012) the UK have the cards. No one can call these societies undemocratic.
My wife’s newly-minted green card is a marvel of technology, locked down with ten fingerprint biometrics, and virtually impossible to counterfeit. She is obligated, by law, to carry it everywhere and still lives in a free country. The technology is at hand to provide secure ID for all under constitutional protections.
Personally, I would prefer some relatively mild and unobtrusive controls to the sight of black uniformed paramilitaries (I saw the black uniforms and heavy weapons come out in D.C. post-9/11 and know they are out there) patrolling our major cities and transit hubs, random vehicle checks, universal conscription to feed wars of retaliation and a culture of fear on our streets and in our airports.
It is getting to the point, once again, that events are about to overtake us. The reaction to those events (rather than the events themselves) is what our adversaries are seeking. The initiative, it seems, is ours to get back.
Email: jhuey92@yahoo.com
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