The story that wouldn’t die. Journalist Annie Jacobsen traveled on Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles with her husband and young son and was unnerved by the strange behaviour of a group of 14 Middle-Eastern men. She wrote about the incident at WomensWallStreet.com in an article titled Terror in the Skies, Again? A follow up to this appeared in The New York Times which put a different perspective on the events that occurred on Flight 327 by revealing that it was simply a group of Syrian musicians.
The Internet was gripped by the story with a huge amount of discussion appearing on a number of websites, particularly the bloggers who seemed to fall into two opposing camps. A simple Google search for Northwest flight 327 or Annie Jacobsen will find them. Camp one believes that it highlights the flaws in security some even going as far as saying that contrary to all evidence that it was definitely a dry run by terrorists, whilst camp two believe that it was nothing that just got blown all out of proportion by a bunch of paranoid racists.
The official response to the incident was that the Air marshals aboard the airplane felt that no action was needed and that the 14 individuals were thoroughly checked upon landing and were found to be exactly what they said they were, musicians with no links at all to terrorism.
The story doesn’t end there though Jacobsen in an effort to claw back her reputation having been exposed as a hysterical overreactor pursues the story some more and discovers some further details such as the fact that members of the band were traveling on expired visas.
Annie Jacobsen’s five part story can be read at the following addresses.
Part I: Terror in the Skies, Again?
Part II: Terror in the Skies, Again?
Part IV: Terror in the Skies, Again?
Part IV: Terror in the Skies, Again?
Part V: Terror in the Skies, Again?
A moderate middle ground on this incident needs to be taken I think. Security is a twofold process. Making people safe and secure and making them feel safe and secure. There is a well known phrase ‘giving a false sense of security’ well the converse is also true ‘giving a false sense of insecurity’.
We are currently living in a climate of fear and the Western governments are as much to blame as the terrorists are for that. We are not getting a positive message that reassures us from our government. Instead we get told that an attack is inevitable and we should prepare for it and we are sent leaflets containing common sense advice of how to react in an emergency. The average citizen is in no more danger from dying in a terrorist attack than they ever were, such events are rare occurrences and affect relatively few people in any case. Yet we cannot escape talk of terrorists, they are everywhere – the modern day bogeymen.
The 9/11 attacks and subsequent actions by the US and British governments have created a fear and mistrust of Arabs. That isn’t to say that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were wrong but the inclusion of them into the War on Terrorism was wrong. I think that for the average person whose only knowledge of Arab and Muslim people comes from the media coverage of terrorist attacks and wars it can be difficult not to equate Arab with terrorist.
We are asked by our government to be vigilant and report suspicious activity. But be vigilant for what?
This request only causes the public to become afraid and paranoid, and increasingly xenophobic. We are not trained professionals and so can easily misinterpret innocent activities as being sinister if we are caused to be overly suspicious. This mindless rhetoric that the politicians keep spouting is for their benefit only i.e. to get them re-elected or in the case of leaders like Putin of Russia to further secure their hold on power.
