I’m going to delve into the realm of public policy – yes, where angels fear to tread – because what I see happening to our nation and much of the West regarding security is so destructive to the social fabric.
We have an enemy, and that enemy is radical Islam. Not extreme Islam, as in Islam at the fringes, but radical Islam, as in Islam at its core. If we could say that all the people born in Islamic nations were dangerous, and that only they are dangerous, our job would be easy. We could merely contain them and we would be relatively safe (assuming we could maintain our borders…).
But we can say neither. There are good people born in Islamic nations, and there are terrorists who have been born in other nations, including our own. Racial profiling, which some think would save us, is neither an acceptable or an effective answer.
The problem of identifying terrorists has become much more subtle than we once thought it to be, and our methodology of dealing with the problem is pathetically inadequate. There is not a machine or a manual inspection technique possible that will detect the explosive delivery methods that are already extant or that are coming soon. Yet the authorities continue to place all their trust in such inspection mechanisms.
Those mechanisms are predictably becoming more invasive, and an outcry against them is rightfully rising up. The authorities are caught between public sentiment and the need for safety, both powerful forces. Yet the horrible irony is that terrorism is likely to occur despite the onerous searches. What is going to happen to our trust level in our government, to our sense of safety, and to our national conversation when such an incident occurs despite our best efforts? It’s not going to be pretty.
The good news is that there is a common sense answer to this dilemma. It has already been in operation for years, and it works extremely well.
That solution is found, quite naturally, in the nation of Israel. Israel is surrounded by neighbors that want to wipe it from the face of the earth and destroy the Jews. Israel can count on precious few friends in the world. When your situation is that critical you either come up with solutions that work – or you die.
The Israeli approach to security involves multilayered behavioral profiling, and damage containment. The Israelis set up multiple checkpoints at which they confront each person seeking access to a likely target site – say, an airport or a building. Israeli agents are trained to detect suspicious attitudes and subtle behaviors. They look into the eyes of each person they qualify, not his underwear.
To contain damage that might occur, the Israelis keep blast-proof containers available for placing devices in before they explode. And barriers are set up to minimize damage if a bomb does go off. These consist of blast-proof glass partitions, and they make it easy to quickly functionally evacuate an area.
Despite nightmarish threat levels on a daily basis, the Israelis have an impressive safety record, one we have only emulated by the dumb luck of bombs that would have caused massive loss of life repeatedly not going off. You will find the full article on the Israeli system HERE. Every citizen should read it, and then every citizen should contact his congressman and demand that we shift gears to a similar system.
We are shadow boxing the terrorism threat, when real solutions exist. It is a scandal that our nation no longer is able to recognize or implement common sense solutions to its problems, but that’s what happens when you exclude God, as we have been doing for several decades now. We are reaping the resultant lack of discernment that the Bible warns against. Common sense isn’t so common any more. And we are paying the price.