Sanford D. Horn: Adopt Israeli air strategy

In baseball, good pitching beats good hitting, or so goes the adage. In sports in general, good defense thwarts a solid offense and quickly leaves the field giving momentum to the offense.

War is much the same – a solid defense of one country usually prevents the offensive of another country from taking effect. Certainly former President Ronald Reagan understood that as the United States won the Cold War leaving the Soviet Union a crumbling figment of its former self having broken down into myriad smaller nations of little consequence.

However, that the once great Soviet army could not defeat a rag-tag band of Afghanis in the 1980s was clearly a harbinger of things to come. The war on terror, and make no mistake, it is a war – declared by Congress or not, war has most certainly been declared on the United States by terror cells and groups throughout the Muslim world.

Yes, the Muslim world – we’re big boys and girls, at least outside of the current administration, with its collective heads still deep in the sand, that we can affirmatively identify what we have known since before Sept. 11, 2001 where our enemies have originated, in extreme Muslim ideology, straight from the Koran. All one need do is read it for proof.

And like a defense left on the field of play for an overextended period of time that eventually becomes weak and porous, so does that of a military who is short of ideas on how to combat the offensive. That is the current state in which the United States finds itself while attempting to combat a terror offensive that seems to know no bounds.

When one brand of defense falters, it is time to go back to the locker room at halftime and draw up a new plan. For the United States, it is time to adopt the Israeli defense strategy in dealing with air travel. A system privatized, not run by the government or union shops as has been proposed in the United States, as if delays in air travel aren’t bad enough now, imagine what will happen when unions run things.

In Israel psychological profiling rules the day where potential trouble is caught before it even reaches check-in and El Al does not have hijackings or terror attempts – at least none that reach the point of passenger awareness – and that is an important comfort. These are professionally trained men and women who interview passengers prior to reaching security to determine their flight-worthiness.

And while the naysayers are quick to point out how many flights leave Israel on a daily basis versus those that leave American airports, the airlines had better consider their own bottom lines – the profit and soon to be large loss statements.

How long will people continue to put up with what has turned from an inconvenience of removing shoes and belts to what is now, by all legal definitions, sexual assault by government flunkies. Remember, airline CEOs, the government has little vested interest in whether or not profits are made – see Amtrak and its stellar profit margins.

Adding insult to potential injury is the statement made by the virulently anti-American Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) calling for Muslim women to arrive at airports in full Muslim dress demanding that the TSA only pat down their head and neck areas in deference to their religion. (Have Orthodox Jewish groups made the same unconscionable demands regarding their women who also dress modestly – covering from neck to wrists to ankles and wearing wigs? Certainly not.)

Remember, flying is not a right. It is a privilege and there are rules which are printed on the backs of airline tickets as well as on airlines’ websites. That said, touching of genitalia – never. Allowing CAIR and Muslim women to dictate the terms of their pat downs – never.

The United States is back on its heels playing catch up to the terrorists. Only after Muslim terrorists hijacked and crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon did this nation began to investigate where flight students originated and their status in this country. Only after the “shoe bomber” did airlines have passengers remove shoes and forbid carrying lighters or liquids of greater than three ounces. Only after the “underwear bomber” attempted to go “fruit of ka-boom” in Detroit, did airlines institute more strict searches. It’s a miracle they didn’t start inspecting passenger’s undies then.

In each case, the key word is “after.” Now, there is the most invasive scanning and groping to see if that’s a weapon being packed in the shorts or under the nun’s habit or in the infant’s stroller. However, until the United States adopts the Israeli strategy, it is actually necessary to conduct these searches, due to the short-sightedness of the government, specifically the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration.

These strict searches have become incumbent upon the airline industry because of the Muslim terrorist lifestyle. Why are infants’ strollers searched? Why are nuns searched? Why are men in wheelchairs searched? Because the Muslim terrorist has no regard for life. They are willing to sacrifice their women and children, for which they have no respect, and themselves as well, for the hopes of reaching heaven via some Koran edict about killing so-called infidels.

Further proof of this is how weapons are stockaded in elementary schools and milk factories. That no sacrifice is too insignificant and that the terrorists know Western sensibilities and emotions run high at the loss of innocent life. Thus a major difference between them and us.

The Israeli strategy must be adopted and pro-active measures must be employed in an effort to once again make the once friendly skies more tolerable. Yes, that means profiling, but at the same time remembering that converts to any religion are typically more zealous than those born into that faith, thus making everyone a suspect worthy of profiling, thus the need for the Israeli system.

Inculcating the Israeli system upon American should be relatively simple and easily accepted when considering the current hands-on approach that is turning frequent flyers into drivers and stay at home former travelers because the inconvenience has far outweighed the former allure of travel to exotic lands and family events.

Interestingly, that civilization began on the banks of rivers and seas in a part of the world that today is bereft of civilization. People lived close to their birthplaces out of necessity and civilizations grew around water for sea travel was the mode of the day. Terrorism may very well force people back to living close to their birthplaces once again in order to remain close to family and avoid what may or may not await them in the skies.

An important lesson must be culled from the words of the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (1898-1978). “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” Sadly, that day is nowhere in sight.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and political consultant living in Alexandria.