Panic In The Air

As well as laying into the substitution of "CE" for "AD", and the Soviet-style supplanting of Christmas by New Year (I very much doubt that making a fuss of New Year does go back to John Knox in Scotland - it will be Victorian if it isn't actually twentieth century, as it is amazing how many things are), Peter Hitchens writes:

Here we go again, another series of unreasonable panic responses to a terror incident in the air. As far as I am concerned, if Mr Abdulmutallab is convicted of the crime alleged against him he may go to jail forever. I hate such acts and believe in severe punishment for the people who plan or attempt them.

But is our reaction logical? First, from a reasonably careful reading of the reports of this event, I learn that the official global airline security system, and the parallel system of intrusive identity checks, to which all air travellers are subjected all the time, don't seem to have worked according to their own procedures. Is Lagos airport secure? If not, what exactly are the provisions, at Amsterdam or elsewhere, for dealing with passengers arriving from Lagos and intending to travel onward to other destinations? If there is any doubt about Lagos, anything short of a rigorous and unavoidable check on all such passengers would mean that the European and American airline security system was as strong as the security check at Lagos. Are we happy with that? Yet I haven't myself seen any clear answer to this question.

It appears to me that at some important point, Mr Abdulmutallab may well not have been properly searched. It also seems to me that this person, whose own father had astonishingly reported him to the US Embassy for suspicious and erratic behaviour, and was on an official watchlist, ought to have attracted special attention long before he boarded the Detroit flight. I mean, if someone's father (and in this case a powerful, wealthy and respected citizen) goes to these lengths, shouldn't every alarm bell shrill? What else are all these security systems for, if not to pass on such warnings to the people who can act on them?

Those responsible for these omissions should be located and disciplined, and the gaps plugged. But I fail to see why airline passengers should be punished, as planned, for the failings of the authorities. A ban on more than one piece of hand luggage seems to me to be wholly unrelated to this event, and mere opportunism. I am not quite sure why security is being stepped up at British airports, which were not even involved in this incident (unless it is security for passengers arriving from Lagos, in which case we need to ask why this needs to be stepped up). A ban on in-flight maps (and in some cases in-flight movies) seems to me to be verging on the insane. Are we also to be stripped of our watches, so we can't work out roughly where we are anyway? I take it that matey flight-deck announcements about speed and weather will also be banned, so as not to give terrorists help in working out the plane's position. Why not black the windows out, in case we recognise a lake, a river, a coastline or a mountain range?

And then there's the plan to strap bursting passengers, bloated with the water they've drunk to try to stop dehydration, and unsettled by pressurisation, into their seats for a whole hour before landing, with the lavatories locked. Pursue this unhinged logic a little further, and all passengers should be issued with giant nappies, blindfolded, shackled and tranquillised, Guantanamo-style - and not told where the plane is going, either. This is presumably the securocrats' dream, a wholly safe world where only officials can travel.

Airline security seems to me to have reached a point where it resembles collective punishment, and punishment of the wrong people. It wasn't the flying public that caused this mess. On the contrary, it was a passenger (as did those aboard United 93) who bravely tackled Mr Abdulmutallab. And I'm still anxious to know if this bomb was a real threat. The culprit, as I've said, presumably thought it was and so deserves everything he gets, if found guilty.

But are we making a huge bogeyman and a tight-knit organisation out of pathetic amateurs? Does anyone know, in a demonstrable and certain way a) if Richard Reid's shoe-bomb would actually have worked, in the unlikely event of him not being spotted setting fire to his footwear? b) if the liquid bomb could actually have been assembled in a useable form aboard a plane? We know a version of it would have gone off. We were shown that. We don't know, at least I don't in any reliable way, how hard it was to assemble, or whether that assembly was possible in flight.

I am not asking these questions rhetorically. I genuinely wish to know and would be grateful for any hard facts. It amazes me that these prosecutions take place and this vital detail seems to be skipped over, or assumed. I know it's irrelevant to the guilt or innocence of the perpetrators. But it's not irrelevant to us, or to the way we are governed. Let's hope it will be made clear in this case.