On High Alert

This country’s most recent run-in with terrorism has set off many red flags in the minds of Americans. President Obama verbally attacked his national security team yesterday for not recognizing the threat posed by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The Nigerian man was able to board a Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day with explosives in his underwear. He will be in a federal courtroom this afternoon. But the questions raised by the incident refuse to go away, no matter how much the Obama administration would like to quiet the matter.

In the wake of 9/11, how was a suspected terrorist able to board an international flight with today’s security measures?

If the U.S. had the information to prevent the botched attack, why were government officials not able to piece it together in time to stop Abdulmutallab from boarding the flight?

Who should take responsibility for the incident?

Will the Obama Administration’s recently revamped security measures prevent any further attempts to terrorize American airplanes?

Is safety in the 21st century an illusion?

These are all good questions with not so easy answers. Safety must be the chief purpose of the government. Without it, philosopher Thomas Hobbes would say, “human life would be nasty, brutish, and short.” Now America is a long way from the “state of nature” described here. But clearly the world’s skies are not as safe as we might have thought. I think we are safer than we were before 9/11, but only to a certain extent. Officials can implement all the security measures in the world and concerns will still exist. And at some point, personal freedom comes into the conversation. The new body scanners have raised privacy concerns that the government feels justified in violating. We sacrifice some freedom to the government in order to ensure our survival (another belief of Hobbes). But should the government have the ability to run a full body scan in a public airport on each citizen?

Perhaps the answer to it all lies in America playing offense rather than defense in fighting terror. We must take the fight to their backyards rather than give them the opportunity to test our security safeguards. And this is a reality that I do not believe the Obama Administration has fully understood. This county must go to great extents to extinguish terrorism wherever it exists; on the streets of Baghdad, in the mountains of Afghanistan, or in the capitol of Iran. Sitting back, waiting for threats to come our way will only further burden the people’s fate in its government’s ability to keep them safe. Until this administration is willing to play to win rather than to not lose, its citizens remain…on high alert.