Everyone knows the facts of yesterday’s passenger shooting at Miami International Airport. I’m most interested in the responses to the shooting. ersonally, I’m inclined to assume the federal air marshal acted properly. Air security is essential and any air marshal must be allowed to act on the facts before him. We need to conduct an honest investigation and learn any lessons on how to improve air marshal response in the next incident. I have no doubt that it’ll occur. What we don’t need is shameful rhetoric.
“This shows that the program has worked beyond our expectations,” said Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House transportation subcommittee on aviation. “This should send a message to a terrorist or anyone else who is considering disrupting an aircraft with a threat.”
Rep. Mica needs to shut up. The death of a man is beyond our expectations? How low were they before this incident? I can’t imagine we thought air marshals would just say “Excuse me, but could you please not blow up this plane?” Rep. Mica’s statement is posturing for the law-and-order crowd and should not be tolerated. He’s taking far too much glee in this incident.
Which brings me to Bill O’Reilly. Danielle and I watched the O’Reilly Factor last night because he had part one of his interview with Howard Stern. We wanted to watch and nothing else was on. We should’ve recorded it and fast-forwarded through the propaganda.
During the opening segments, Mr. O’Reilly spoke with a “reporter” at Miami International Airport. During the discussion, Mr. O’Reilly described the shooting as (I’m paraphrasing) “if the suspect doesn’t cooperate, the air marshal is going to blast him.” The rest of the discussion consisted of the “reporter” prosecuting the case and coming to the perfect law-and-order conclusion that any action of force by security forces are justified if the risk of terrorism exists. Rather than facts, we got glee that a man died and the remaining passengers were marched off the plane with their hands on their heads. Oh, and the luggage not belonging to the dead suspect blown up by the bomb squad was just a reminder that we take terrorism seriously.
The entire debacle disgusted me. That many people were watching, absorbing the propaganda as gospel pissed me off.