Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee warned in a new book of potentially devastating terrorist attacks against such places as Disney World, the Mall of the Americas, and the Academy Awards. And he is right to be concerned. Despite claims to the contrary by President Obama and a fawning press, whose access seems to depend on a willingness to trumpet the president’s line, the Islamic State is not contained, al-Qaeda is not defeated, and terrorists and their sponsors see in the United States right now a tempting mix of weakness and vulnerability.
Americans feel vulnerable now because of the San Bernardino attacks, but even those attacks narrowly averted failed to succeed not because of the success of American counter-terrorism efforts, but rather because of errors on the part of the terrorists. The Christmas underwear bomb that almost brought down Northwest flight 253 over Detroit in 2009 failed when the bomb ignited; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had successfully smuggled the device onboard despite airport security in Amsterdam and U.S. terrorism lists. Likewise, a May 1, 2010 Times Square car bombing was averted when a street vendor noticed a suspicious, smoking car and alerted police. Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani resident of Bridgeport, Connecticut, was subsequently arrested. That’s hardly a victory, however, when he managed to smuggle a car bomb into Times Square in the first place.
The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, both gears itself to stymie the last terrorist attack — hence the Transportation Security Administration’s obsession with water and completely arbitrary limits on liquids — and is also unable bureaucratically to think out-of-the-box as terrorists often do. That it faces a suffocating political correctness which constrains effective policy and analysis simply takes an uphill battle and makes it Sisyphean.
It’s too constraining to simply focus on the highest profile targets like the Academy Awards or airlines. Amtrak security is woefully deficient, even as stations like Washington’s Union Station screen videos about how effective sniffer dogs can be. Smaller stations have no significant security precautions, and travelers can still bring on large duffels which are never screened (think of all the water bottles they could fit, TSA!). Amtrak may protest that its security is sufficient, but then the logical question to ask is whether the TSA would agree that it would also be sufficient for our nation’s airports.
Beyond Amtrak, buses would be an easy target. Should the attack occur in a tunnel, such as those under Baltimore’s Harbor, those under the East River between New Jersey and Manhattan, or Boston’s ‘big dig’ tunnels, and it’s no longer a simple bus bombing.
McCaul likely cites Disneyworld because of either intelligence to which he has been privy, or because it simply seems like a logical high profile place. But there are any numbers of other amusement parks less prominent and perhaps not as often thought about or secured. There are currently 11 Six Flags amusement parks, for example, and any number of other properties. Hershey Park, for example, where I often went when I was little, is in a largely rural area that might not be the best equipped to respond. And while the Mall of America is large and famous, huge new malls are being built between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, as well as on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. An attack on any mall — be it in Iowa, North Dakota, or Mississippi — would be equally devastating.
There’s a history of terrorists attacking not only the prominent cities but also the periphery. It’s been more than a decade, for example, since Islamist terrorists attacked a school in Beslan, southern Russia, and made that provincial town a household name. School shootings rock American consciousness regardless of whether they occur in New York City or, as more often is the case, in suburban towns like Columbine, Colorado, or Newtown, Connecticut (where the Sandy Hill elementary school is located). Many schools require visitors to sign in, but anyone intent on doing harm might just as easily burst their way in what otherwise is an unguarded facility.
Likewise, terrorists need not defeat security at a place like the Academy Awards if they want to strike a blow at the elite. College campuses are wide open. Many professors and students would bend over backwards to avoid any profiling of those appearing more extreme, yet in elite schools, terrorists could attack a crowd and figure that they would have a decent chance of finding themselves with the child of a congressman, senator, prominent businessman, or news anchor.
It can be ghoulish to talk about the possibility of mass transportation disruptions, terrorists murdering kids, or malls and movie theaters getting shot up. The point of this post is not to give terrorists ideas; they have already thought of myriad targets. Rather, the point is to counter a conceit in Washington that the United States is secure simply because rhetorically political leaders say it is. The game whereby pundits and media blame presidents for allowing terrorist attacks to occur creates a perverse incentive like during the Vietnam-era ‘zero defects’ policy in which leaders claim all is well and refuse to acknowledge or correct mistakes. The simple fact is that it is a solid system that keeps Americans safe, and not individual presidents, although they have the ability to recognize and plug gaps.
It is not enough to symbolically secure only the most prominent targets. If terrorists strike the homeland, they will likely seek out the soft underbelly, the vast majority of which remains insecure almost 15 years after 9/11 and more than two decades after the first World Trade Center attack. The U.S. approach to security for critical infrastructure and sites is akin to trying to drown out a rat problem in a large stadium by placing rat poison around a dozen seats.
So what can be done? Firstly, bags loaded onto buses and trains should undergo the same security screening as those on aircraft. Second, good schools know their parents, but drop-ins should no longer be the standard practice. Want to visit a school? Then call ahead of time to be placed on a visitor list so that the security guard has it on hand. Yes, a security guard. That’s a small price for grandparents, aunts, uncles, salesmen, and mechanics seeking to access the school’s interior to pay in exchange for knowing children are safe. As for those security guards, it’s time to place them in any mall or facility that accommodate more than a certain number of people at any given time. Fire marshalls already make a capacity call, and the idea that bags might be checked at movie theaters, malls, or concert halls already happens when theaters or concert venues want to keep out that contraband candy or other snacks which might undercut the venders they license to charge exorbitant prices.
The Times Square attack was averted by two venders who saw something suspicious and reported it. Whether it’s the case of the “flying Imams” or Ahmed, the clock boy, the price for being wrong should be an apology for the inconvenience from authorities and a slap on the back for their vigilance, not the malicious prosecutions launched by Islamist apologist organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Most Americans recognize that it’s only a matter of time until someone targets a mall or a school. Many New York Times best-selling thrillers and movies have imagined such scenarios (just as Tom Clancy raised concern about suicide pilots targeting the U.S. government years before 9/11). Counter-terrorism should involve not only gathering intelligence, but also putting in place a basic security system to dissuade at a minimum the lone wolf terrorist radicalized online, from afar. The question for policymakers is whether the United States should be content to always prevent a repeat of the last attack, or recognize that it must be proactive to stop the next terrorist atrocity.
