Thursday, December 08, 2005

Air Marshall Shoots Passenger

I saw this headline last night, and the first thing that ran through my head was -- Left-Wing Press stories on why it shouldn't have happened in

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And here they are. "He was mentally unstable." "He didn't have his medication." "One passenger claims he didn't hear the man say anything." "No explosives were found."

Look. A guy on a plane says he has a bomb. He does not cooperate when a marshall tells him to put the bag down. Then he runs.

In the comfort zone of not being on the plane and having the bit of knowledge that we do now, that being that there was no bomb and the guy was unstable.... it's easy to say but... but...

But nothin'.

"I have a bomb."

"Put it down."

"No."

*BLAM!*

I have no problem with that.

I'm sorry the man was mentally unstable. I'm sorry he didn't have his medication. But to my mind, there is no question the situation was handled the way it should have been.

Not that it would have been any different if it were otherwise. If it were a man of middle-eastern decent, there would have been questions about racial prejudice.

There is an unfortunately very large group of people who wish that we could just all hold hands and violence would go away.

Killing another human being isn't pretty, and it should never be lightly undertaken. On the other hand, allowing someone to kill a bunch of innocent people is even uglier. We didn't see what the bomb would have done had there been one. All the marshall knew was this guy said he had a bomb. He had to decide then and there -- do I risk the lives of all these people by sitting him down and playing 20 questions with him?
"Do you really have a bomb?"
"What kind is it?"
"What's bothering you today?"
"Are you mentally ill?"
"How is your medication holding out?"

This ain't the movies. This is real life. Nobody with superhuman powers can instantly see where the bomb is and know how to disable it in a flash. There's no telepathic "Counselor Troy" sidekick who can instantly know if the person is lying.

"But the wife was saying 'he`s sick, he`s sick'".

I really do feel badly for her. I can't imagine. That would be awful.

In Al-Queda's training materials, they talk of our Western hesitation as a weakness. And it is. It's a noble weakness to have, but it's still a weakness. Our enemy knows this weakness and utilizes it. Our enemy doesn't have it. Our enemy doesn't stop and think "could this be an innocent civilian I am about to kill?" No Westerners are by definition guilty, and if by chance he kills good Muslims, why they will go straight to heaven. He's doing them a favor. So it doesn't matter.

Now imagine a suicide bomber duo working together to buy that little bit of extra hesitation. "But he's sick!"

KA-BOOM! 140 people dead.

Why didn't they stop it??????

It must be Bush's fault.

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