Final Word: Terrorism has a new meaning for Americans
Nov 1, 2013, 9:12 PM | Updated: 9:12 pm
Friday’s shooting at Los Angeles International Airport should serve as a reminder that the definition of terror as we know it has changed a lot since 9/11.
After 2001, our focus as Americans turned against people from the Middle East and all the talk was about racial profiling. Was it right or wrong? Was it effective? And the TSA was born, to further complicate air travel with hour-long lines, ridiculous restrictions on what you can and can’t pack in your bags, all in an effort to make air travel safer.
Has it worked? Maybe, but you’d better believe that terrorists who are hellbent on killing Americans will do so, either here or abroad. And they probably won’t do it using a major airliner anymore.
What we saw Friday was terrorism too.
We will likely find out that the shooter who went after a Transportation Security Administration agent at LAX was mentally ill and had the TSA on his hit list. But for the thousands of others in the terminal today, this was nothing short of an act of terror.
Can you imagine coming face-to-face with a madman carrying a rifle in a crowded airport with your children next to you?
Can you imagine being the man or woman in charge of air traffic at one of the world’s busiest airports, LAX, and having to deal with this shooting?
This shooter caused mayhem, plain and simple.
He killed a TSA agent too, and not only has that agent’s family suffered a loss, but the TSA will no doubt try to change something in the way they operate so that something like this doesn’t happen again, which means even more fun at the security line.
Terror has a new meaning. It’s the knowledge that you never know when or where you might be faced with a situation where your life or maybe the life of one of your children is on the line and someone who can’t tell reality from fantasy or right from wrong is holding the gun.
Is there anything more terrifying than that?
