Keystone Kops @ the Airport 2

My esteemed Keloland colleague and NSU colleague Emeritus, David Newquist, has a thought-provoking post on the Flight 253 alleged, would-be bomber, and the public reaction to the event. Professor Newquist begins with some scathing remarks about "Monday Morning Quarterbacks."

The attempted bombing of the Detroit-bound airliner has produced a classic epidemic of Monday-morning-quarterbacking. And we hasten to point out that the term "Monday Morning Quarterback" is not exactly a compliment. It designates those people whose only sense of consequence is to sit by while other people engage in all the work and action and then bicker and criticize, even though these kibbitzers have never had what it takes to play the game in which they pose as experts.

Well, he has a point; except, of course, that democracy means that the work of experts will necessarily be judged by non-experts. It also means that anyone can say what he or she thinks as soon as he or she thinks it.

Professor Newquist is no exception, and so he blithely engages in his own Monday morning quarterbacking.

The difficulties of making sound and justifiable decisions about people who pose possible threats is covered in two Washington Post articles of intensive reporting on the Nigerian bomber and on the Fort Hood shooter. In both cases, the clues about the directions that these men took are ambiguous and not definitive.

I don't know if Professor Newquist has what it takes to play the game of security analysis, but his judgment here is at odds with the man who is in fact the coach in this game. President Obama:

It's been widely reported that the father of the suspect in the Christmas incident warned U.S. officials in Africa about his son's extremist views. It now appears that weeks ago this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community, but was not effectively distributed so as to get the suspect's name on a no-fly list…

Even without this one report there were bits of information available within the intelligence community that could have and should have been pieced together…

Had this critical information been shared it could have been compiled with other intelligence and a fuller, clearer picture of the suspect would have emerged. The warning signs would have triggered red flags and the suspect would have never been allowed to board that plane for America.

Monday Morning Quarterbacks are sometimes right in their post-game analysis. Most of us MMQ's didn't think that the clues in this case were all that ambiguous. President Obama seems to agree with us (myself included) in his conclusions.

Professor Newquist and I agree on one thing: it isn't easy to balance good security against privacy rights.

Then there is much criticism and accusation about the fact that the Nigerian's father informed the Dept. of State that his son was being radicalized by Islamic terror groups but he was not put on a list that would have prevented him from boarding a U.S.-bound flight. While the critics think he should have made the A-list of potential terrorists, they conveniently ignore the ruckus raised about just what criteria must be applied to curtail people's rights. Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, has said that we need to practice outright discrimination in order to prevent Islamic terrorists from entering the country or engaging in activities within it. Some people have been wrongfully placed on lists and some have been subjected to humiliating searches and interrogations. These instances show actions taken against people on the basis of false accusations. With the aborted airliner bombing and the shootings at Fort Hood, we are told that the security measures following 9/11 are not working as well as they should be. We even have some valid analysis as to why they have not worked. But the questions of abandoning our fundamental principles of freedom, equality, and equal protection of the law loom over all information and discussions of deterring terrorism.

Professor Newquist is wrong about the “critics.”  They celebrate the “ruckus” raised about privacy rights.  They think that that ruckus has prevented effective security measures. 

But apart from this, he lays out the problems pretty well.  But Newt Gingrich is obviously right, to make only a logical point. Airline security precisely requires "outright discrimination." We need to discriminate between the terrorists and the non-terrorists. There is no way to avoid the conclusion that religion is a clue. How many Buddhists or Animists have boarded planes with explosives sowed into their bloomers?

These days you can't board a plane without taking off your shoes. Your luggage is x-rayed and often manhandled. A machine that would scan my whole body as I get ready to depart for New Orleans would scarcely be less intrusive than what I have had to endure previously. More importantly, the worst thing that can happen to privacy rights is that they should be seen as providing opportunities for terrorists.