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Saturday, Oct 11, 2008
The laser-wielding terrorists are coming! Not since the Dread Syrian Wedding Musicians went to the bathroom has such idiotic hysteria gripped America.
Jan 4, 2005 | Two weeks ago, in what was intended to be a preemptive snuff of a burgeoning spark of hysteria, I discussed the implausibility of terrorists using laser beams to down a commercial airliner. Unfortunately, lasers are back in the news again, now getting the full attention of the major press and television networks.
In the past week, no fewer than eight aircraft are said to have been targeted. These include a Cessna executive jet preparing to land at Teterboro, N.J.; a SkyWest commuter plane approaching Medford, Ore.; and a jetliner at 8,500 feet above Cleveland. On New Year's Eve, a beam was aimed at a police helicopter over Trenton, N.J.
Back in mid-December, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security passed along a memo stating that terrorists had explored the viability of deploying high-intensity lasers as weapons. The alert came after several earlier incidents of rogue beams penetrating flight deck windows. In the most serious case, last September, the first officer of a Delta Air Lines jet suffered a burned retina after being struck in the face during approach into Salt Lake City.
While these events are perplexing, and at least potentially dangerous, a presumed link to terrorist activity is, even if impossible to discount, still premature and wrongheaded. Alas that's a bit like whispering into a hurricane here in 2005 America, where the T-word has been spliced into the very DNA of our collective societal psyche. Thanks to one day's events more than three years ago, we've come to exist in a full-on reversion mode in which every anomaly that's at once potentially harmful and not instantly solvable takes automatic cover beneath the dark cloak of "terrorism" -- a paranoid pathology that shows no sign of relenting. We've concocted an upside-down religion, choosing to invest our faith in the cunning of an invisible adversary while disparaging our own voices of reason and good sense. At heart it's an old story, fear of the unknown, taken to new and self-destructive heights in a politically charged climate.
This time it's lasers, ushering us to the verge of a fear-storm of, dare I say it, Annie Jacobsenian proportions. My reference is to the writer whose July 2004 account of sharing a flight to Los Angeles with a clutch of hyperactive Syrian musicians inspired a summer-long crusade by reactionary pundits and talk show hosts. The musicians, so went the spin, were in fact a team of terrorists engaged in a covert rehearsal -- a so-called "dry run" -- for a September 11th sequel.
Jacobsen, whose byline now credits her as an authority on terrorism and air safety, hasn't yet tackled the laser story and the radio rage machine hasn't got its script down. But give them a little time; fear is a tricky thing to cultivate, and there are still some dots to connect. That plane over Cleveland was hit by a ray emanating from the 90 percent black suburb of Warrensville Heights. Perhaps there's a Pakistani cabdriver or family of Syrians living in town.
Authorities plainly admit there is no credible evidence of a specific terrorist plot to acquire or deploy lasers, a disclaimer carried by most published news articles covering the latest incidents. The DHS/FBI memo from December was one of 160 bulletins released during the past two years, and cited nothing more specific than terrorists "exploring" laser attacks. Just as they've explored the use of nuclear weapons, biological weapons, guns, knives, car bombs, plastic explosives and so forth. "We have no specific, credible information," said DHS spokeswoman Valerie Smith, in a report carried by the Associated Press, "suggesting that such plans are underway in the United States."
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