I fly a lot. In fact, I have over 750,000 base miles in Delta Airlines’ Frequent Flier Program. The Christmas Day terrorist attack on the Delta plane from Amsterdam, a city I will be flying into soon, is making my wife nervous. I keep telling her that flying into Amsterdam is better than flying out of Amsterdam. Years ago, I was a missionary in Munich, Germany, a man from Australia told me that Amsterdam did not check you coming into the country—they checked you going out to make sure that drugs were not leaving the country.
It seems that Amsterdam’s battle on terrorism, something that should hit close to home given the cost the Dutch have paid recently, is to change their policy on outbound tourists.
That, however, does not scare me as much as this administration’s response, or lack thereof. First of all, Mr. Obama is on vacation so we don’t need to let him know what has happened right away. I seem to remember a huge outpouring against the response of Bush on September 11. Where is that outrage now?
The biggest problem with the clown from Arkansas who became president of at least all the high haired women in his vision was that he treated all acts of terrorism as criminal acts. He refused to see that this is a war we are fighting. Not recognizing you are in a war does not make it true. The Jews refused to believe the Nazis were killing them in the Concentration Camps—yet they died by the millions.
Now, we have someone in the Oval Office who wants to go backward in our approach to these folks who have vowed to do everything in their power to kill us and destroy our country.
So, we are now going to stop having blankets in our laps for the last hour of the flight. We already are not allowed to talk to each other on the way home, remember the rule that you cannot stand in small groups on the plane coming back from international travels. And don’t forget that great new rule that you cannot use the bathroom in a class other than the one you are flying in. I guess that rule is because everyone knows the terrorist are going to try and use a bathroom in another part of the plane before they try to kill us. We have been taking off our shoes, I guess now we will have to take our underwear off as well.
Suddenly, traveling does not seem so much fun.
Here is a new rule that makes sense to me—anyone who has more than twenty letters in his name is not allowed on a plane that is traveling in or to America. Oh, and if you have been disallowed in England and have recently traveled to Yemen, that haven of free speech and freedom of religion, you are not allowed on any airplane—unless of course you are flying on an Arab Airline in the Middle East, there the rules do not have to be applied.
Seriously, we cannot give in to these threats against our safety. Thank God for passengers who do not care what the rules are, even with the seat belt light on they refused to stay seated and stopped another senseless act by an Islamic extremist nut who deserves to spend the rest of his life in Gitmo, or the Chicago version of Gitmo anyway.
That actually is a good idea, when the man in the Oval Office goes home he will be closer to those he seems more concerned about than you and me.
