The Question of the Week: Why Planes? Look at Israel and you’ll see it is quite simple
By: Steve Yuhas
As the news broke early in the morning on Thursday that a terrorist plot was foiled in Great Britain so-called terrorism “experts” began the barrage of emails and phone calls to get themselves some face or voice time on television and radio. They were successful, but for each “expert” that appears on a program I’m coming to the conclusion that all one needs to do to be labeled an expert is simply to do it and no questions will be asked. Call me skeptical, but any “expert” that cannot answer the simple question of “why do terrorists continue to target airplanes” is not even a mediocre analyst let alone an expert.
Every cable network and radio station talk host received a barrage of expert lists from everything from think tanks, colleges, private companies and individuals saying that this expert or that could appear on our programs to talk about the terror threat that came out of the UK. In case you were sleeping that is the terror threat that was designed to take down about ten jumbo jets while flying over the Atlantic Ocean from Great Britain to the United States using liquid bombs that were constituted on board the aircraft.
Virtually every cable news program I watched and talk show I listened to had a different expert on to talk about the plot. Their experience in terrorism went from vast and when one were to look them up either in Lexis-Nexus or Google it was easy to ascertain why they were labeled as such; others had credentials far less compelling, but were called experts none the same.
It stands to reason that a news outlet, and I won’t put any specific names or outlets here, but suffice it to say that all of the major news networks in their quest for 24 hour coverage allowed anyone with any connection, no matter how peripheral to their actual work, to label themselves a terror expert and to be interviewed as such, used so-called experts to explain the question of the terrorist love for all things aviation.
So why was it that when the question of “why are planes still a target” was asked why none of them that I heard, and I looked for it, remarked the slightest at the fact that terrorists become acquainted with a target and that target becomes an obsession?
When homicide bombers began in Israel their targets were two things: groups of innocent people in public spaces and buses – decades after the first homicide bombers who are the targets of these bombers? Groups in public and buses – terrorists tend to stay focused and not one person that I can find on either Lexis or using transcripts from programs brought that fact to the attention of the presenter. Terrorists have stopped targeting planes to and from Israel because the targets are too hard to get and the Israelis are so far ahead of the game, but America, sadly, is far behind.
It is not insignificant that our terrorists choose airplanes for their target of opportunity because that is exactly what terrorists do and in the United States the target of opportunity happens to be planes just as the targets in Israel have forever remained buses and people in crowds.
Some of the so-called experts, many of which have no entry on Google at all and most have nothing published that could be found on Lexis, alluded to the fact that planes remain a target because they would scare Americans most. That may be true, but they missed the real reason that planes are the target for terrorists wanting to create havoc on the American people and economy: because it works.
September 11, 2001 is evidence that just four jetliners, 3,000 people and a couple of buildings were sufficient to virtually cripple the United States and to throw us into a near recession and to war. That point was not lost on terrorists any more than killing Israelis on buses or in large groups creates scenes of terror so horrific that although Israelis have become used to living life in a terror infested country. The specter of an attack is always near when on a bus or in a crowd and on airliners today Americans, indeed people the world over, are far more vigilant because of the 9-11 attacks.
Targeting planes to or from the United States is nothing new: plans for such a plot were uncovered in the 1980s, terrorists became so enamored with them that they were readying themselves for the act when a fire in their apartment stopped the same number of jumbo jets from Asia as were scheduled to be targeted from the UK from certain doom. Did stopping that action using planes from Asia stop al Qaida or any terrorist group that adheres to their hatred for America from looking at planes? Of course not, 9-11 proved that, and neither will the foiling of this terror plot using liquid chemicals.
Planes are targets and will forever be targets because they are common to the American psyche and are where people of all nations are at their most vulnerable. You give up complete control of yourself and your safety on an airplane; Americans do not do that in any other situation for the most part, and are left in the sky at 35,000 feet with nothing between you and the terrorists. That is and will forever be a scary thing and any success will undoubtedly be looked at by terrorists as a way to mangle the United States psyche and economy.
Buses and crowds are and will remain the target of terror in Israel because many Israelis have to take the bus and as anyone who has been to Israel knows – crowds are equally common. In the United States it would take blowing up of many buses to create chaos and mass panic because virtually nobody – outside of a few major cities – uses public transportation and the use of planes has been successful before.
Terrorists may often change tactics, but for all of the terror experts making their way onto radio and television who cannot answer the simple question of “why planes?” the answer is quite simple and does not require the term “expert” to follow your name: because they can and because it works.
In this time of terrorism and the influence of home grown terrorists who make no distinction between innocent and guilty; evil and good it would be nice to know that the people speaking on the topic had a long term understanding of their craft. Unfortunately it was proven this week that many of them do not and that is sad considering that it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why terrorists keep with the same target and simply change modality.
Steve Yuhas is a radio talk show host on NewsRadio 600 KOGO in southern California and may be reached at steve@steveyuhas.com or www.steveyuhas.com