On the recordNovember 29, 2010
With that visual, keep in mind I've spent the last 26 years of my life traveling in and out of the Middle East in various capacities--serving there in the military and being in and out of the region, traveling on business, and now as a Member of Congress. I've had a chance to watch a system that is virtually flawless, and it's based on a series of questions that is not intrusive. It's a free society. They've maintained their civil liberties with a dramatically higher threat to terrorism. Yet what we have done, if we look at this, is create the bureaucratization of security. We're not going to deal with the root cause issues; we're going to treat the symptoms. Nobody will ever take down an airplane with a box cutter or a pocketknife the way the hijackers did on 9/11. Now that citizens who are flying know, there have been multiple instances in flight where people have had erratic behavior, mainly trying to get to the lavatory, and they were tackled by passengers out of concern for this. Americans will fight back. The situation has changed, and in effect, we're fighting the last battle; we're fighting the last terrorist attack as opposed to something like the Israeli system, which really incurs virtually no cost and manages to keep a very robust flying public that's very safe, and it all begins with asking questions.
