Turkey shoots down Russian plane

Unfortunately, if you sit down and ask yourself, "How would I cause great chaos if I were a terrorist?" you could make a list that is quite long. For those people whose job it is to try to keep hundreds of millions of people safe, thank you.

I still don't think much of TSA, but I used to be one of those people who silently bitched and moaned because I couldn't zip through airport security in 30 seconds. I've since changed my tune; if my security comfort level is better and the only thing I have to do is get to the airport 15 minutes earlier, so be it.

 

There are dozens of major college football games this weekend that'll draw crowds of 50,000 to over 100,000 and at most of the ones I've attended, security has been security theater, designed to reassure but which would hardly stop a determined terrorist or terrorists. The one that had the tightest was Harvard-Yale, which figures. Got to keep our elites safe.

 

Some of that is the difference between theory and reality, though.
Could you stop, frisk and wand every single one of the 100,000 people coming through the gate for the Michigan-Ohio State game?
Yes.
Would there still be 50,000 people waiting to get in at halftime?
Yes.
So, you do what you can, show a bit of force and presence, and make it a deterrent. Hell, at any college campus in the country somebody could load up a grill with explosives, set up a fake tailgate party and take out 50 or 60 people without breaking a sweat. They've always said if somebody really wanted to do damage they'd blow themselves up in a crowded airport security line instead of trying to blow up the plane itself.
There's only one real way to be 100 percent safe as a society, and it's nowhere near worth taking that route.

 

Not for anything, but that would probably be even worse than blowing up the plane because, in addition to the casualties, it would shut down the entire airport, and probably others.

 

Batman, at a very routine French Ligue 1 soccer game in Lyon in 2012 that I attended, every person entering the stadium, a crowd of about 25,000, was frisked -- not because of terrorism, but to stop hooliganism. The suicide bombers at the soccer match in Paris were stopped from entering the stadium by that method, and that was a crowd of 80,000. It can be done.

 

I covered the Sugar Bowl several years ago, and the security was insane (in a good way). Just like an airport, had to send briefcase/camera case through a scanner, turn on laptop and cameras for the security people to see, walk through medal scanner, and then they let dogs sniff everything. I don't know what it was like for the average fan, but they made darn sure none of us media were sneaking anything in.

My paper doesn't cover that team anymore, but we still get the SID emails. They sent one earlier this week and about increased security for this week's game.

What concerns me more is the high school games I cover. None of my schools have any security at all. Any person or group could pick a big football game around here with 10,000 spectators and go to town.

 

Superdome is probably following the security protocol it used for the 2002 Super Bowl. Very strict, but people do get in the stands. BTW, the French cops were very, very smart to keep fans in the stadium and keep the game going. The first thing I noticed after 9/11 was no matter how tight security was for entrance, once the game is over and the crowds are coming out and milling around, heading for parking lots, public transit, etc., it's much less strict.

 

I thought this was a pretty good read on the Russia/Turkey situation.

Turkey shot down a Russian warplane. Why it would happen and why it matters, explained.

 

Gotta love this line:

"While Russian leaders don't really, as a rule, admit mistakes — that's not how they teach it in the Moscow school of diplomacy, as I heard one senior US official put it — there are indications that it was beginning to see its Syria intervention as a mistake."

And U.S. leaders do, as a rule, admit mistakes?

 

Obama is damned if he does and if he doesn't, but I thought having a statement like that was bad optics. Unless you're announcing that you know terrorists are targeting X and we need to be vigilant everywhere, I don't know what he gained from that other than alarming people. Getting seven push alerts about an impromptu presidential briefing on security the day before the holiday isn't calming for most.