Posted by
Defend America on Saturday, November 14, 2009 3:17:42 PM
Tragedy or Scandal?
We weaseled and equivocated and appeased.
By Mark Steyn
Shortly
after 9/11, there was a lot of talk about how no one would ever hijack
an American airliner ever again — not because of new security
arrangements but because an alert citizenry was on the case: We were
hip to their jive. The point appeared to be proved three months later
on a U.S.-bound Air France flight. The “Shoebomber” attempted to light
his footwear, and the flight attendants and passengers pounced. As the
more boorish commentators could not resist pointing out, even the
French guys walloped him.
But the years go by, and the mood
shifts. You didn’t have to be “alert” to spot Maj. Nidal Hasan. He’d
spent most of the last half-decade walking around with a big neon sign
on his head saying “JIHADIST. STAND WELL BACK.” But we (that is to say,
almost all of us — and certainly almost anyone who matters in national
security and the broader political culture) are now reflexively
conditioned to ignore the flashing neon sign. Like those apocryphal
Victorian ladies discreetly draping the lasciviously curved legs of
their pianos, if a glimpse of hard unpleasant reality peeps through we
simply veil it in another layer of fluffy illusions.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGYzZTExZWU0NjZhYTM2ODdiNmU2NDMyNzUzMTk5NzY=