Reflections of routine air travel

17 March 2010
By Saul Landau

I waited in line at the Phoenix airport thinking how a Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, evaded security. Meanwhile, an informed TSA woman wanded me with a small stick designed to detect explosives -- if I had had any around my armpits, butt and other body parts.

After Umar made headlines, who would enter an airport with “boomzy woomzy” in his knickers, as a British wit described the outré plot to blow up the airplane carrying him to the United States? After the young Nigerian failed to ignite himself, thanks to a fellow airplane passenger’s intervention, President Obama threatened to retaliate anywhere -- meaning Yemen? Surely such a threat would stop a future terrorist attack!

We already have several hundred thousand troops and more mercen… – oops! contractors – scouring several countries hunting potentially violent anti-western Muslims. Unfortunately, this violent process has made even more enemies for us.

But not me! The woman with the detecting wand waved me through “security.” I re-looped my belt, put on my shoes and thought how 19 suicidal, mostly Saudi, box-cutter-carrying hijackers had changed my and everyone else’s life. After their ghastly deed a Jamaican schlemiel tried to light his explosive-laden shoes on a London-U.S. flight. Again, quick work by a flight attendant stopped the impending tragedy.

Has Al Qaeda hired unemployed New York designers to make hot shoes and undies as part of their larger scheme to disrupt airline schedules? U.S. reaction to Bin Laden’s escapades have taken an apple pie experience, air travel -- see George Clooney in Up In The Air – and made it repulsive.

OK, Umar didn’t light the fuse in his skivvies. His nether parts and the plane remained intact. But because of his well-publicized failure, the Administration spent more money fighting airport wars supposedly against people like him. Al-Qaeda has provoked the government to institute permanent non-productive entities – like TSA, Thousands Standing Around or Taking Shampoo Away. They bleed the budget and help start each trip with a frown. Who benefits? Detection technology companies boom. Do their wands distinguish C4 from talcum powder? How many creeps would sacrifice themselves for a cause that few Americans can grasp? Hundreds? Thousands? Hmmn!

A guy with a grudge against paying taxes piloted his plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas. That’s the American way, not having some bozo hide explosives in his dentures. Will the next Al Qaeda come from Uruguay via the Emirates? Will U.S. troops invade yet another country – like Yemen -- should a future Suicide Sam attempts an attack? That would force Al Qaeda trainers to move to another country. Umar trained in Yemen, the media reported, that mysterious Red Sea land on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

Wait. For almost two decades, U.S., British, German and Spanish and African Muslims have responded to Al Qaeda’s call to do violence – mini 9/11s – at U.S. Embassies and other spots. Umar, the Nigerian whose parents warned authorities, learned from the same texts that attracted members of the Muslim Brotherhood and now Al Qaeda.

How come we don’t study those texts? The export of U.S. culture, Sayyid Qutb an Egyptian scholar believed, could bring death to the human spirit. If U.S. culture prevailed, he imagined a world whose spiritual values would become shopping, lawn-mowing and car-washing – along with inter-sexual hand holding, dancing and hootchie kootchie.

Qutb became the ideological father of the Muslim Brotherhood, embraced Sharia Law and a religious state, and repudiated the West’s “elections,” those processes that follow the imposition of corrupt, pro-Western dictators on the tribal societies. After spending time in Colorado, he observed: "Nobody goes to church as often as Americans do, yet no one is as distant as they are from the spiritual aspect of religion." http://dscriber.com/denver/402.html

Qutb saw “a moment of unbearable crisis,” where people had lost touch with their own nature. Inspiration, intelligence and morality had degenerated along with sexual relations ''to a level lower than the beasts.'' He felt horrified over the level of anxiety, crime, addiction and existentialism in U.S. life. He also saw the richest countries as “the unhappiest of all. And what was the cause of this unhappiness – “this wretched split between man's truest nature and modern life?” (Paul Berman NYT Magazine March 23, 2003)

Western Europe “civilized” (colonized?) what is now the Third World. This process involved capturing African slaves and looting the territories they were civilizing. Then they “granted” the modern Muslim world “independence,” which meant societies characterized by grinding poverty and institutionalized political corruption.

Few commentators dare link poverty and corruption to extremism in Muslim countries. Instead, Washington and London react like Pavlov’s dog to the stimulus of violence against them. A military response vitiates discussion of pro Israel policies and support for oppressive, ass-kissing Arab regimes. Like millions of passengers, I feel the trickle down effect of this strange development. Well, on to the connecting flight!

Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow and filmmaker. Go toroundworldproductions.com for his movies.

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