by Paul Johnson
I'll never forget the look on her face that snowy day in Edmonton.
She was a sweet grandmother, probably mid 80s, and was one of the last aboard that Toronto-bound plane sometime ago when she slipped into the seat beside me with such a look of such fear and dejection I couldn't help but ask if she was OK.
"It was my homemade jam," she said. "Two jars I was bringing out to Toronto for my grandchildren. And they said I couldn't take it on the plane. They threw it away!" She almost teared up.
I tried to explain to her the stringent rules about liquids, gels, shoes and nose hair clippers, etc, and she listened, but I could tell it was no consolation. She gave me this forlorn stare and then asked, "Do you think it was because it was homemade, and not store bought?"
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Precious. But also a little disturbing, and possibly, entirely pointless.
As I've been reporting on the American struggle to understand how the hapless Umar Farouk Adbulmutallab, a.k.a. the alleged Gonch Bomber, got his "package" onto that plane, I'm reminded of this Edmonton grandmother, and of something you might remember from a high school history class.
This image provided by ABC News shows a pair of underwear with an explosive packet; the slightly charred and singed underpants with the bomb packet still in place, that was smuggled onto the Northwest Airlines Flight 253, alleged by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
You may recall that after the horrors of World War I, vowing never to let the Germans invade again, the French built something known as the Maginot Line. A massive, fortified system of bunkers and machine gun nests and tank traps so menacing that the French leaders could tell their people, "Never again will this happen!" You may also recall that when World War II began some years later, the utter uselessness of this undertaking was revealed by the German Panzer units that simply drove around it.
Have we created nothing more than a modern day Maginot Line?
Forty-five thousand new TSA security screeners hired at airports in the U.S. Tens of billions spent. Armed pilots. The growing indignities of modern air travel. Vast new bureaucracies like "Homeland Security." (Since when did any Americans ever refer to their country as "The Homeland?") All were called for and planned in the dark days following 9/11 so the leaders here could crow "Never again will this happen!"
See the resemblance?
The thing about Maginot Lines, if you will, is the very thing that makes them seem like something that can protect a nation – their daunting size and power – is the very thing that makes them fail. Often spectacularly. Because they are, for the most part, fixed objects in a defensive posture, their location and contours become quickly known to those seeking to defeat them. And worse, because they are creatures of big government, they are often slow and lumbering beasts that become resistant to change and end up serving the interests of those who work for and make money off them, rather than those they were designed to protect.
Thus, Maginot Lines are particularly good at shaking down grandmothers from Edmonton, but often unable to stop the enemy that learns where they are, and then simply drives around them.
I want to believe we have constructed more than just a modern day Maginot Line, but I'm not sure I'm convinced.
Are you?
Paul is a Global National correspondent based in Washington, DC.
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