IN THE NEWS
Chicago: in the terminal
Business trips are the worst time to follow the news. The trio of us traveling together were only sure of one thing: the sketchy news reports we heard about a thwarted terrorist plot in Great Britain could only mean delays at the airport. When I arrived at the airport with my two colleagues from work, none of us were happy to have guessed right. The line for curbside check-in covers stretched along the entire curb—and still kept going. Inside the terminal, the serpentine check-in lines coiled into back hallways and grew visibly by the minute.
According to the little news we had, the UK terrorist cell planned on sneaking some sort of weapon, disguised as the sort of liquid (like bottled water) or gel (like toothpaste)that you normally find in every travelers' carry-on luggage, onto airliners. Therefore, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) responded in the same way it reacted to Richard Reid, the hapless "shoe bomber": it focused its energies on the type attack that someone just attempted (and failed). Today, that meant that everyone had to purge their carry-on items of all liquids and gels, or check their luggage. An airline representative walked up and down the lines, announcing the new rules to us in the tones that a Soviet commissar might use when addressing a group of worried conscripts: You will remove these items from your carry-ons, or you will be stopped and searched.
I had my share of toothpaste, shampoo, nasal spray, solution for cleaning my glasses, and the like—as did one of my traveling companions. I volunteered to pack his toiletries in my bag and check it. In spite of the lines, we had arrived early, and my flight left before his.
While standing in line, I got increasingly worried about the TSA's spastic response. Terrorists usually don’t repeat the exact same attack, if they can avoid it. Small terrorist cells, deliberately planning the most terrible carnage they can devise, are too vulnerable to be predictable. At the tactical and operational levels of strategy, they live and die by the dynamics of measure and countermeasure like no other kind of combatant. Not only will terrorist planners avoid repeating their own methods, but on occasion, they will avoid repeating the methods that other terrorist groups, in completely different parts of the world, have used. Some attacks can be so successful, or so easily thwarted, that they poison the well for terrorists everywhere.
The terrorist repertoire is not infinite. However, the TSA seems narrowly focused on the methods that have been used, not the ones that might be used. Richard Reid tried to hide explosives in his shoes, so for the last five years, travelers have removed their shoes before going through airport security lines. Now that the UK group has tried something to do with liquids and gels, the TSA has banned them from all carry-on items.
But what about the methods terrorists have not tried yet? Anyone with a little imagination can think of what a resourceful terrorist might try. What could someone hide in hollowed-out books or fake belt buckles? In other words, whatever the UK terrorists were planning was a predictable innovation in a form of warfare that requires constant innovation. A cologne bottle might contain gasoline; make-up containers might contain chemicals that, when mixed, could have explosive, flammable, or noxious results. (In fact, terrorist groups, including members of affiliates of Al Qaeda, have already discusses these tactics for years.)
At this rate, travelers will have to perform a slow strip tease. However, even if every airline passenger walks naked onto the plan, there's still the risk of someone hiding something, particularly since drug "mules" have demonstrated how to hide things in their own digestive tract. The TSA would still be looking backwards, not ahead, so the effect on our collective safety would be marginal.
Chicago: the tarmac
After the new delays that the extra "security measures" have created, the old delays—in this case, bad weather—might seem a little more tolerable. As we sat on the tarmac for hours, waiting for the storm to blow past Chicago, my chief frustration was lack of information.
None of the newspapers in the terminal carried the news of what exactly happened in Great Britain. (Apparently, the UK government's announcement occurred after American newspapers went to press.) Even the news channels, the familiar soundtrack of airport tedium, didn't have very solid information. For everyone boarding the plane, the question was the same: What exactly was going on?
Fortunately, European governments usually provide useful, credible details about important counterterrorist operations. I'm sure that, in the coming days, we'll get some of the who, what, and how questions answered.
Unfortunately, on this side of the Atlantic, the question, What exactly is going on?, remains the defining feature of post-9/11 counterterrorism. The American public has no clear idea of the number of terrorists that may threaten the "homeland," the number of attacks they are likely planning, or even the goals and background of the terrorists themselves. There could be thousands of terrorists prowling the US border, or none. They could have several plots in the works, or none. They might be bent on the destruction of the United States, or they may be trying to scare the US public away from its support of Middle Eastern governments. They might be foreign terrorists, or the domestic variety.
Average Americans can't tell you much about the shape and volume of the terrorist threat to them—even though that's supposed to be our number one national security concern. Instead, Americans function much like the passengers waiting on the tarmac, trying to cope with little information and no influence over where we're going.
California: on the way home
We finally arrived, after a four hour delay. The wait at baggage claim is longer than expected, but still tolerable. I'm glad I took the extra time to save a few personal items for myself and my colleague.
Since I've been in close proximity to a lot of other travelers for the bulk of the day, I've overheard what they've been saying about today's news. Several times, people voiced the same concern I had earlier: the TSA does not seem to be making us safer, in spite of its intense reaction to a just-foiled terrorist plot. At baggage claim, a tall man in jeans and a T-shirt said, "What are they going to do next, stop us from taking books on board?" The man standing next to him, dressed in a suit and tie, replied, "Don't they have chemical detectors that can tell if someone is trying to smuggle explosives past security?" An older woman standing nearby nodded in agreement with what they both said. In the accidental demographic sample of the airport, skepticism about the US government's counterterrorism measures doesn't seem limited to a particular social class or gender.
The delays on this trip gave me time to get through Thomas Ricks' Fiasco, which I've already cited a couple of times in the last week. While reviewers have focused on the bleak aspects of the book—the Bush Administration's mistakes aside, many US military leaders are culpable for many of the biggest blunders in Iraq—there are portions that are oddly comforting. For example, any people in the US military were strongly opposed to the policies that led to the Abu Ghraib scandal (which, as Ricks reminds us, was always much bigger than Abu Ghraib prison). Some opposed the conflation of the war in Iraq with the war on Al Qaeda, which led to frenzied attempts to extract "actionable intelligence" from "terrorists" who proved to be innocent civilians caught in a sweep. Others objected to the approval of interrogation techniques that violated the Geneva Conventions' taboos against humiliation and torture.
Behind the Bush Administration's claim that 9/11 had changed the political and moral universe for Americans, other members of the executive branch—people with direct experience of the counterinsurgency war in Iraq—reached the opposite conclusion. Americans would only win in Iraq if they acted like Americans, not like the Soviets who occupied Afghanistan. Cleaving to American values, institutions, and traditions was not only necessary to save America's soul, but also to defeat the insurgent groups in Iraq.
"We need to take a deep breath and remember who we are," cautioned a major with the 501st Military Intelligence Battalion, which supported the operations of the 1st Armored Division in Iraq…"It comes down to standards of right and wrong—something we cannot just put aside when we find it inconvenient, any more than we can declare that we will 'take no prisoners' and therefore shoot those who surrender to us simply because we find prisoners inconvenient…" The "BOTTOM LINE," he wrote emphatically in conclusion, was, "We are American soldiers, heirs of a long tradition of staying on the high ground. We need to stay there."
Five years after the 9/11 attacks, Americans seem to be ready to come home. Whether or not American troops remain in Iraq, American foreign policy needs to "come home" to the same principles that guided the United States to victory in World War II and the Cold War.
Back at baggage claim, as many reasons people had to complain, there were not even the usual eruptions of airline-inspired stress and frustration you normally hear. Americans, in general, seem to be in a far more level-headed mood than they were a year or two ago. Perhaps we've reached a collective realization tat some sacrifices will be necessary in the face of domestic and foreign terrorism, but we may be making the wrong ones. Five years after the 9/11 attacks, most Americans—from an army major in Iraq to the weary crowd waiting at the baggage carousel—seem ready to battle terrorists more realistically and soberly than their own government.
