Scouts

The New York police have been finding suitcases - empty ones - on the subway. They've concluded that the city's defenses and responses to potential bombs are being probed.

And reports of people probing the defenses at airports and on airplanes - of which Annie Jacobson's is only the latest and most famous - are starting to filter out to the public.

And the public is responsing - as did Jacobson, for better or worse (depending on your perspective).

Bad thing, right?

I don't think so. Here's why.

Chumley Wonderbar at Plastic Hallway summed up part of the terrs' goal

They don't act until absolutely necessary because acting too soon opens them up as a target to a group that may not have revealed its true numbers. What if the number was not 14 but 20? And what if the other six were all sitting within a few seats of an armed Air Marshal? Do you really think it would be that hard for them to take his or her gun? Then, once the group is armed, what are the other Air Marshals going to do? Have a gun fight in a pressurized cabin at 30,000 feet? Trust me, no captain in his or her right mind is going to open the cockpit door, no matter how many people are getting killed in the cabin. As far as I'm aware, any method of getting into the cockpit would take at least a few minutes, so there really is no need for an immediate response. Lastly, what if these people were just looking for a pattern in Air Marshal's behavior? What if they were seeing what precipitated a response and what did not? If Ms. Jacobsen's story is true, then she and the flight attendent who shared all that information with her were both in the wrong. Let the trained professionals do their jobs without opening them up to any more danger than they already face.

The terrorists aren't stupid. They know that the job of "blundering" through American security and testing the reactions doesn't need to be carried out by the A team, the actual murderers.

The also know that in an open society, not only will a significant portion of our society be actively hindering efforts to hamper their efforts, but they ethnically represent a big enough part of society that pleas that they're just going about their business are perfectly plausible.

Posted by Mitch at July 27, 2004 05:27 AM | TrackBack