Friendly Skies?

Remember the War On Terror? Or is that just too 2002 these days? It's not like we made any major headway, like we did on the War On Drugs. The jefe de jefes, the patron de patrones, Beltran Leyva went down in a blaze of gunfire and grenade explosions during a military raid last week on a high-rent apartment complex in the capital city of Morelos, Mexico. As a result, there will be no more drugs. Finito. The End.
Of course, that's not how things work, and to expect anything like that to happen in the War On Terror would be ridiculous. Or maybe, when a Yemeni air raid purportedly killed the top two leaders of al Qaeda's regional branch Thursday, and an American Muslim cleric linked to the man accused in the fatal shooting of thirteen people at a U.S. Army base may also have died, and suddenly all terrorist activity stopped. Nope.
But then there is the case of a Nigerian man who said he was an agent for al-Qaida tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane Friday as it was preparing to land in Detroit. His fellow travellers, who smelled smoke and heard what sounded like firecrackers, rushed to subdue him. It does take the edge off of terror when people stop being, well, terrified. My guess is that interfering with a group of passengers who are already stressed out about flying on a major holiday is a little like sticking your face in a high-speed fan. Remember, these are people who have already gone through all the additional security measures put in place after everything changed back in 2001: no shoes, no liquids, no nail clippers. And this clown gets on the plane with some explosive widget or other and tries to blow up the plane? It's a wonder the guy got off the plane alive, not just a little singed. Tell this same group of folks that they won't be getting their in-flight peanuts and you might have trouble getting the plane on the ground safely. Who needs Air Marshals when we have a cabin full of frustrated passengers? Sorry Mister Mutallab, there's just not a lot of terror left in the not-so-friendly skies these days.