Your editorial “The war gets closer” points to the fact that air travel just got a whole lot more difficult for everyone, and ends by wishfully positing that the new restrictions will help reverse Canadian nonchalance towards terrorism. But threats like these should be treated with stoicism rather than the hyper-vigilance you praise. Are acts of terrorism so common on commercial jets that from now on we must suspect every mother with a bottle of formula boarding a plane as a potential terrorist? Should we lock down every airport in the world because of a closely monitored and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to terrorize? I think not.
Original Article:
EDITORIAL - The war gets closer
Fri Aug 11 2006
THE war on terror struck a little closer to home yesterday for travellers using Winnipeg's airports and other airports across Canada.
Travellers have become accustomed to the stringent security measures that were put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, but the announcement by British authorities that they have uncovered a plot to blow up several aircraft flying from Heathrow Airport near London to the U.S. raised security requirements at airports around the world, including Winnipeg's, to new and extraordinary levels. Britain was on its highest level security alert and the United States went to "red alert" for the first time since 9/11.
The alleged plot involved smuggling liquid explosives and detonators aboard passenger planes concealed by suicide bombers in carry-on luggage. If it had been successfully implemented, the result would have been catastrophic, resulting in the deaths of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people and a crippling blow to the air travel industry.
Lives may have been saved by good police work and counter-terrorist intelligence, but terrorists did not fail entirely -- the affair is hurting the industry, at least for now. It has left Heathrow in a chaos of stranded travellers as flights were canceled and delayed, as they have been in Europe, the U.S. and Canada. This may quickly get back to a semblance of normality, but normal is not likely to be what normal used to be. The new security measures pretty well eliminate carry-on luggage. No liquids are allowed except for baby food, prescription medicines and milk that mothers bring for their babies -- mothers must sample the milk in the presence of security guards before it is allowed on the plane.
These measures may be annoying, but they cannot be considered extreme when the bombs that were intended to be used were to be made out of a sports drink mixed with a peroxide-based gel, detonated by an MP3 player, all of it corner grocery stuff and all of it easily taken aboard a plane until yesterday.
There will be delays at airports, inconveniences and frayed tempers. That is understandable -- airports are aggravating at the best of times. The anger, however, should not be directed at airport or security officials. It should be directed at al-Qaida and the other Islamist terrorist organizations that bring this threat of death to innocent civilians around the world.
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It should also be directed at ourselves. Canadians have been complacent about the war on terror -- Canada's contribution to that war in Afghanistan is increasingly unpopular. Even an alleged plot by Canadian Islamists to behead the prime minister and blow up buildings in Toronto did not really catch Canadians' attention. Perhaps airport line-ups and luggage restrictions can accomplish what the terrorists themselves could not.
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