By filling his underpants with explosives and then boarding an aircraft bound for Detroit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab provided us with another glaring example of how airline security can so easily be compromised. (For anyone who remembers the 1970s, Abdulmutallab might have also provided a whole new meaning to the term “hot pants,” but I digress).
In response, governments and airlines clamped down with even stricter procedures. While all of us should be in favour of secure aircraft flights, this response again falls into the category of providing the illusion of security rather than really providing it. Our officials continue to rely on a theory that enough equipment and procedures will make air travel safe while ignoring the truth that real security only comes when the people responsible for security are trained, motivated and engaged in the process.
There is something, however, that troubles me about this event. In fact, my concerns are the same as the concerns I had with the original airplane shoe bomber, Richard Reed. In case you don’t remember, just after 9/11, Reed boarded an aircraft with a bomb in his shoe but was apprehended after failing to light the match required to detonate the bomb. At the time I was suspicious as to why Reed was able to build such a bomb, create the necessary documents and board a secure flight, but couldn’t figure out how to light a match. In the recent case with Abdulmutallab, he not only prepared an explosive that could not be detected, he also created some of the necessary documents, then managed to talk himself onto a flight despite the fact he, apparently, had no passport, but then was also foiled in his plans by a similar inability to light a match.
It strikes me as very strange that two seemingly intelligent individuals cannot perform such a basic and simple task. Now understand that I have not been a conspiracy theorist for most of my life. I believe that JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone. I believe Martin Luther King Jr. died from a shot fired by James Earl Ray, acting alone and Bobby Kennedy died from the actions of Sirhan Sirhan, again acting alone. I ignore the debates on UFOs, Big Foot, and the “Human Face” on the plains of Mars. However, over the last 20 years, we have learned that our collective governments have withheld, invented, and/or destroyed vast amounts of information that they did not want the public to receive and that these same governments have conspired to deceive the citizens on numerous occasions. With such a background, it takes little imagination to wonder if government leaders might have orchestrated such airplane incidents in order to justify harsher security and further reductions of our constitutional rights and civil liberties.
In the final analysis, these two bomb plots might be legitimate and “exactly as advertised.” But the bigger problem still remains — our leaders have acted in an untrustworthy fashion and it should be of no surprise to anyone that we no longer trust these same leaders. In the long run, this relationship is not sustainable. Either we need leaders who are prepared to be honest or our leaders need to prepare for dealing with dishonest citizens and the myriad problems that occur in such shattered relationships.
To all the politicians that have violated the public trust over the last 20 years, you have been a disgrace to this nation. I leave you with the words of Sir Walter Scott, “And doubly dying shall go down to the vile dust from whence they sprung, unwept, unhonored, and unsung.”
While many question his sanity and claim his logic is “alien” in nature, Brian McLeod maintains that he is a carbon-based life form.
