by Ian Buchanan

Created on: January 02, 2010   Last Updated: January 04, 2010

I love Americans and have many wonderful friends there, but I find so many who haven’t traveled outside the country to be myopic and have no concept of the outside world or its values. Once again that side has been shown in the Christmas potential air disaster over Detroit. The Administration has hunkered down and declared the world its enemy, and in its usual way has penalized millions of people with additional travel requirements that cost millions of dollars and do very little to actually catch the real terrorists who mean harm.

It might be good for public consumption to point fingers abroad, this time blaming the British for failing to deal with the bad guy when in fact the Brits had already cancelled his visa and declared him persona non grata. I find it difficult to believe the American intelligence network was not aware of this.

The American media demonstrate their ignorance of the rest of the world when so many refer to the failure of measures in Nigeria and Amsterdam (one a country and one a major city in a significant European country) when those same measures are not available in the majority of American airports. They compound their ignorance when they claim the potential death of an entire plane load of Americans, just like the death of three thousand Americans on 911. In fact there were many “aliens” on board that Christmas flight and there are many foreign families who still grieve loved ones who were also killed in the Twin Towers.

How tragic it is that the current head of Homeland Security stated that the 911 terrorists had entered through Canada when that was not the case. The fact is that they did not enter through Canada, but they had passed through American immigration points, and entered quite freely. The trend to blame the country they came from rather than the failure of the American screening process is one reason some people don’t like Americans.

Ever since Lockerbie the conditions imposed on the traveling public, worldwide, have been increasingly draconian, but they still didn’t stop that single individual from getting on the plane for Detroit. The result? More hassle for granny and grandpa and the babe in the arms of an already frazzled mother. I wonder how much money has been spent over the years on procedures that are nothing more than window-dressing.

Airline employees are trained to look for particular people; surely the vast resources of the government can do that for a much more detailed profile of the terrorist, and blend intelligence gathering to that effect. It’s just too easy to ramp up restrictions than to step back and focus on the real issue of identifying and thwarting the real terrorist.

Dear Americans, a great many of we aliens (an offensive terminology) love you dearly, but you sure drive us crazy.

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