With the failed Christmas Day bombing plot fresh in mind, the Senate, which has yet to vote on the House bill, should do a better job of sorting priorities. The U.S. is a prime location for terrorist attacks, and everyone knows that. Our government needs to focus more on our nation’s defense, and less on the house bill. This is a problem that needs to be taken care of, not put aside for later.
Since 9/11 some might say terrorism has only escalated. There have been numerous terrorist attacks, some worse than others. A terrorist attack is a terrorist attack, and the fact that they are still occurring is still frightening. After 9/11 we saw a change in our nation’s security. A new department was created, the Department of Homeland Security. A department designated to keep our nation and its people safe. As time has progressed their work got sloppier, the frequency of attacks got higher, and the fear in Americans grew rapidly. Our nation needs a plan, a plan that will keep our nation and its people safe, and that plan starts with fixing airport security.
Airport security did not start to become an issue until around 1970. This was known as the start of terrorism. It’s the time when hijackings and bombings were a popular choice of attack among terrorist organizations. For the past 40 years numerous terrorist attacks have occurred, and the severity of the attacks is only continuing to escalate. 9/11 should have been a wake up call for the U.S. government, and maybe it was for a few years. But now is when we need the government most, they need to acknowledge reality and come up with away to stop these terrorist attacks from happening.
In the United States, airport screeners pat down selected passengers, at times waving a magneto metric wand over their bodies, or frisking them. French aviation personnel cannot make physical contact with a passenger unless a law enforcement officer is present. And in Israel, the country thought to have the tightest aviation security in the world, screeners will occasionally order searches of suspect passengers' body cavities. When you compare other countries security measures to the U.S.’s security measures it is unbelievable to see the lack of security being provided by our nation. Its as if we are trying to be targeted by terrorists.
Air travel is a very popular form of transportation in this day and age. Thousands of people fly daily, but how many of those people are terrorist? It is very hard to tell if a person might be a potential threat. The only thing that can be done is to hope that airport security did there job, and that job is to secure the airport.