"The Response to Every Terrorist Attack Cannot Be Another Checkpoint"

This is very instructive particularly because it is coming from a major network talking head who is generally an apologist for an aggressive state.

Brian Michael Jenkins,  a senior adviser to the president of the RAND Corporation and director of the National Transportation Security Center at the Mineta Transportation Institute, writes:

After suicide attackers killed 10 people at the Brussels airport in March and 43 people Tuesday at Istanbul's airport, CIA Director John Brennan said that he'd “be surprised if Daesh is not trying to carry out that kind of attack in the United States.” Daesh, of course, refers to the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). News headlines immediately translated Brennan's words into “Daesh likely to carry out an Istanbul airport-type attack in the United States.” Although both are scary, the two statements are very different. Brennan offers a personal view about terrorist ambitions. The second suggests a high probability of an attack. Neither offers much in the way of evidence other than it happened there, therefore it will happen here.

The attack in Istanbul will further crank up the heightened state of public anxiety in the United States following the June attack at an Orlando nightclub. And, of course, no one should say that terrorists cannot attack an airport in the United States. Relatively recent history is filled with attacks and near-attacks at airports...

r suicide attackers killed 10 people at the Brussels airport in March and 43 people Tuesday at Istanbul's airport, CIA Director John Brennan said that he'd “be surprised if Daesh is not trying to carry out that kind of attack in the United States.” Daesh, of course, refers to the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). News headlines immediately translated Brennan's words into “Daesh likely to carry out an Istanbul airport-type attack in the United States.” Although both are scary, the two statements are very different. Brennan offers a personal view about terrorist ambitions. The second suggests a high probability of an attack. Neither offers much in the way of evidence other than it happened there, therefore it will happen here.

The attack in Istanbul will further crank up the heightened state of public anxiety in the United States following the June attack at an Orlando nightclub. And, of course, no one should say that terrorists cannot attack an airport in the United States. Relatively recent history is filled with attacks and near-attacks at airports...

As in the case with past incidents, the Istanbul attack will renew calls to extend existing security screening to the front door of the terminals. But screening passengers before they board airplanes and protecting airport terminals are two very different tasks. Passenger screening is designed to keep weapons and explosives off airplanes. Screeners are unarmed and cannot engage shooters. That is the role of airport police.

Security checkpoints at entrances are intended to keep gunmen and bombers out of the terminal. They would have to be extended to the baggage pickup areas, since these also have been targets of terrorist attacks. In response to an increasing terrorist threat, security screening had been set up at the entrance to Istanbul's international terminal in an attempt to prevent attackers from deeply penetrating the terminal. But checkpoints create bottlenecks and queues of people waiting to get through them, which then become an easy target. In one sense, Istanbul's security measures worked and the shooting at the front door allowed passengers inside to flee — while they could not prevent casualties, worse casualties might have occurred if the terrorists had been able to slip unnoticed into the busy terminal.

While public apprehension is understandable, the response to every terrorist attack cannot be the creation of another security perimeter. Will a new security perimeter create new vulnerabilities? Will it merely shift the risk to other equally vulnerable places where people gather?

Public places are hard to protect. The terrorist network responsible for the attacks in Paris in November and in Brussels in March targeted a museum, a train, restaurants, a sports arena, a concert hall, an airport terminal and a Metro station. The group also contemplated attacks on churches...

Fortunately, these risks remain minuscule. In the nearly 15 years since 9/11, terrorists in the United States have managed to kill a few more than 100 people.

Government protection is largely a myth.

-RW