Terrorists and Remote Control

An acquaintance of mine who used to work in counter-terrorism told me that if he wanted to blow something up, he would equip a small plane with a GPS guidance system, pack it with explosives, and program it to fly itself into the target. That terrorists had never done this, he said, was proof of their technical incompetence and lack of vision.

My friend's plan involved full-sized aircraft, so I am unimpressed by the small-scale plans of Rezwan Ferdaus. Ferdaus, according to the FBI, wanted to fly remote control model planes into the Capitol and the Pentagon. He was caught in one of those semi-entrapment operations that make me queasy, although in this case the FBI says that the model plane idea was his own. The one plane he had acquired would hold only a couple of pounds of explosives.

Since crashing a full-sized jet liner into the Pentagon damaged only part of one side of the building and killed just over a hundred people, I doubt Ferdaus could have achieved his goal of "decapitating"the "military center"of the US government. He would have had to get pretty lucky to kill one colonel.

Once again I have to say, if these are our enemies, what are we worried about? For fear of characters like the Model Airplane Guy, the Shoe Bomber, and the Guy Who Set His Underpants on Fire, we have subjected ourselves to humiliating searches, warrantless wiretapping, spying on our library records, and untold billions of dollars in expenses? For fear of this we are waging war around the world, sacrificing thousands of American soldiers and more untold billions? Why are we doing this to ourselves?