I made it through airport security in record times both when I was leaving town this weekend and when I was flying back. Both times I arrived at the airport about an hour and twenty minutes before my flight, and both times I was sitting at the gate waiting to board within about ten minutes. I wish I knew how to time it better though, especially since on the way back that meant I could have spent another hour with my kids. Of course, I suppose it would work the opposite way if I were to push my luck and I'd end up missing my plane.
As I was undressing to go through the metal detector without setting off any alarms I couldn't help but think that it probably wasn't doing a whole lot to prevent another terrorist attack. In reality, I think that all of these things have been put into place so that everyone will think that the government is doing something. I think the response to Hurricane Katrina has shown otherwise. Don't you think that if there is going to be another major attack that they are going to go with something that we aren't expecting? I know that the levees that broke in New Orleans did so because of the hurricane, but something along those lines is exactly what I would expect the terrorists to try next. Imagine that the levees in New Orleans had been bombed instead, would the results have been any less drastic? I think the death toll would have been about the same, but somehow I think the government would have responded a lot quicker in that scenario.
Unfortunately, I don't know what the answers are, or where exactly the resources ought to be placed. There certainly aren't enough of them to go around to prepare for everything that could possibly be thrown our way. I'm hoping that we won't see another terrorist attack like the one on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but I'm guessing that Al-Qaida isn't going to stop trying to come up with new ways to get us. I'm just not sure that installing a few extra metal detectors is going to be enough to prevent them from being successful. Hopefully I'm wrong.
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Sorry about the fact that this post was all over the place. It's something I wanted to blog about, but haven't been able to put it into a coherent post. I figured I'd put it up anyway, especially since I couldn't think of anything else to write tonight.
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