The U.S. is behaving like a drunkard at an amusement park, plunking quarter after quarter into the Whac-a-Mole game in a desperate effort to convince itself - and the public - that it is doing everything possible to defend the nation.
From GSN Homeland Security Insider: August 14, 2006 Another game of Whac-a-Mole One of the most frustrating arcade games at those fly-by-night traveling amusement parks is called Whac-a-Mole," a game in which you are handed a padded mallet and asked to pound on the heads of five different moles that pop up randomly from five adjacent holes. You win if you can smash a sufficiently large quantity of newly-ascending moles in a fixed period of time. I'm getting the distinct feeling that Uncle Sam's global War on Terror has become an international game of Whac-a-Mole, on a massive scale. It seems every time we blink, another terrorist attack occurs somewhere in the world - or another imminent threat is uncovered at the last moment - which requires the U.S. to readjust its counter-terrorism strategy yet again, and smash the latest emerging threat on the head. Of course, the "Mother of all Moles" was the 9/11 attack five years ago that kicked this worldwide game into high gear. The U.S. responded to the airborne attacks of 9/11 by spending billions of dollars to federalize all airport screeners, placing X-ray machines in about 430 U.S. airports and requiring airline passengers to subject their luggage to inspections. We pounded that mole with a billion-dollar mallet. A few years later, attacks in Madrid and London on commuter railways, subways and buses became the latest moles to pop up. So, we attempted to smash them down quickly by placing uniformed National Guardsmen in railroad stations, dispatching bomb-sniffing dogs and installing video cameras throughout the nation's mass transit systems. Before those security enhancements could even be implemented, the controversial Dubai Ports World imbroglio erupted in Washington and the latest moles - insecure ports and vulnerable cargo containers - popped up menacingly. Of course, the media and Congress instantly shifted their attention to these newest moles and government officials were obliged to smash these threats on the head with gamma ray detection portals, Transit Worker Identification Cards, known as TWICs, and enhanced cargo container seals designed to ensure that locked containers remained locked. No sooner had those moles been pounded than a new one emerged from an adjacent hole, this one warning of "dirty bombs" or other forms of chemical / biological / radiological / nuclear / explosive (CBRNE) weaponry. So, true to form, Uncle Sam announced an ambitious plan to place hand-held radiation detectors at every U.S. land border and seaport entry point into the country. We promptly whacked that mole on the head. However, the ink wasn't even dry on that Big Ticket acquisition program before Scotland Yard announced last week that it had broken up an enormous terrorist plot in the U.K. to smuggle explosive liquids onto U.S.-bound commercial aircraft with an eye toward blowing up 10 planes in midair. Needless to say, that audacious plot made headlines around the world, politicians sprang to attention and the U.S. Government announced its plan to smash this latest mole by stepping up its efforts to develop new liquid-detecting devices. Does anyone but me see a pattern here? The U.S. is behaving like a drunkard at an amusement park, plunking quarter after quarter into the Whac-a-Mole game in a desperate effort to convince itself - and the public - that it is doing everything possible to defend the nation. I respectfully suggest that we stop feeding this arcade game with more quarters, that we stop reacting to the latest threat-of-the-hour, that the powers that be make the best assessment they can of a myriad of potential terrorist threats and then take the necessary steps to minimize those perceived dangers, while ignoring the periodic, knee-jerk frenzies that will inevitably break out every few weeks whenever a new mole rears its ugly little head. --30--
