Pre-9/11, the expectation was you don't draw attention to yourself, wait it out, you're going to have a long day and a story to tell. Post-9/11, the expectation is you fight for your life.
Better cockpit doors and access hygiene probably come second.
"Post-9/11" began minutes after the first planes found their targets. Flight 93—the one that crashed in Pennsylvania—never made it because the passengers revolted after hearing about the other planes.
It only took a few minutes for the calculus to change. Knowing what was up, those passengers flipped from wait-and-see mode to fuck-you mode. This is pretty good evidence that you're right: the biggest increase in security was and still is that passengers will not be meek anymore.
This recent video by RealLifeLore drives it home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=550EdfxN868&t=1504s
the last time in history that Sovereign American territory was invaded and occupied by a
hostile foreign power was between 1942 and 1943 when the Japanese occupied the
small and sparsely populated Alaskan islands of ATU and Kisa which they struggled to reinforce with supplies and
were only able to hold on to for a year before getting overrun by much better supplied American and Canadian soldiers
Later in the video: https://youtu.be/550EdfxN868?si=gpTplY4Z36tJPxLv&t=2706
that doesn't mean that the US cannot be hurt or have its interests disrupted in other ways the US Mainland
can obviously still become the subject of major attacks from hostile foreign powers if not outright invasions and the
biggest and worst attack that ever befell the US on its own territory happened recently only 23 years agoNot especially accurate. The US and Canadian forces that landed on Kiska had no opposition because the Japanese had already left. They did not overrun Japanese forces that were not there.
Wikipedia describes this as: "On 15 August 1943, 1st SSF was part of the invasion force of the island of Kiska, but after discovering that the island had been recently evacuated by Japanese forces, it re-embarked ..."
And yet, there were still friendly fire casualties, a point omitted from many descriptions of the invasion.
I have never heard of a plain clothes non-employee in cockpict jumpseat.
I’m pretty sure there is a second code on some planes that alerts the pilots someone is attempting to force the crew to open the door.
One of the more reasonable theories for MH370 is similar to the Germanwings case. Pilots can refuse access even if the person outside knows the access codes for the cockpit doors.
Unfortunately (as with everything else), even obvious improvements have potential downsides.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaOvtL6qYpc
That's why I said "If the CA had entered earlier".
While that may be a factor, there's never any news about this happening, except maybe shortly after 9/11 with shoe or underwear bombs.
Hijackings used to be common, they're not anymore post 9/11. There were 27 hijackings in 2000 worldwide. There were none in 2017, 1 in 2018, etc.
So are they stopping anything serious? It's a safe bet they're not.
The planning for 9/11 took several years, $500k in financing, and had a lot of moving parts between recruiting, research, travel/visas, flight training etc. It's hard to believe that people motivated at that level would truly be deterred by what you see happening at the typical American airport these days.
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_cam...:
> As of August 2024, at least 780 persons from 48 countries have been detained at the camp since its creation, of whom 740 had been transferred elsewhere, 9 died in custody, and 30 remain; only 16 detainees have ever been charged by the U.S. with criminal offenses.
Given what we do know about the secretive and illegal activities of the federal government during the War on Terror I don’t think it’s a reasonable assumption that everyone accused of terrorist activity got their day in court.
But the counterpoint to that is that a gunman almost succeeded in killing Trump despite showing the behaviours online and offline of your stereotypical amateur assassin.
The attacks of September 11th 2001 are fundamentally not reproducible irrespective of whether there is _any_ security screening at airports.
The default assumption before that morning was that a hijacked plane would fly around for a bit, then land. The default assumption afterwards is that it will be crashed if a hijacker is allowed to gain control, so the calculus on passenger intervention is quite different.
How so? The delay between the hijacking and the crashes in the buildings for both planes were around 40 minutes... even if there were jet fighters ready to go at the time, the lack of knowledge of the hijacking being in progress for much of this time and the short delay make this kind of attack still feasible.
What was actually improved our chances to avoid such attacks are the limited access to the cockpit and processes pilots must follow in case of hijacking.
The measures at the airport are to limit the risks of hijackings to begin with.
Passengers have intervened in several other terrorists attacks and now regularly intervene for other (non-terrorist) threat passengers.
It is extremely easy to get weapons into the boarding area, people do it accidentally every day all over the country and the TSA's own testing show that their screening misses the majority. Doors and procedures absolutely help as does the passenger response. Airport screening, OTOH, is primarily security theater.
There's plenty of terrorists, but destabilisation of Middle East diverted them away from continental US. Wasn't that the whole point of Afghanistan and Iraq wars?
I put on my critical thinking hat and look at the timeline of "US meddling in the Middle East" and "first terror attack in the US by a middle eastern".
I then notice that the years are 1948 and 1993 respectively and that wet roads actually do not cause rain after all.
The US did not supply Israel in any way until 2 decades later, and it was Eastern European arms dealers first, France second. The first weapons sold to Israel by the US were in 1962 (anti air missiles), followed by some tanks and aircraft later in the decade. Things ramped up considerably after 1967 due to Arab states aligning with the USSR. [1]
RFK was assassinated by a Palestinian terrorist in 1968. [2]
0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_the_Ottoman_Emp...
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93United_States...
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Robert_F._K...
The US had nothing to do with Israel forming beyond being part of the UN vote
True for the U.S. at the government, but not for the U.S. as a country. The early Zionist movement received key funding from American backers, and held one of its key meetings in New York in 1942:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biltmore_Conference
The movement's ideological (some would even say "spiritual") underpinnings can be traced to the mid-19th century writings of this American playwright and utopian activist - said to be the originator of the idea of resettling Jews in Palestine, predating the efforts Herzl himself by half a century:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordecai_Manuel_Noah
So American meddling in the region goes back quite far indeed.
A handful of American Zionists is not sufficient to make it “American meddling”. It was not the center of the movement nor of high significance. This is simply not a factual implication that you're pushing here. There were only 15,000 Jews in the US in 1840, it was not remotely the center of the world's Zionisim at the time of Noah's death in 1851 [3]. In fact, American Jews were overwhelmingly those who decided against embracing Zionism - and that remains true to this day.
Jews had Zionist movements thousands of years before the US existed [1]. When the Muslims originally conquered Jerusalem, one of those movements had recently recaptured Jerusalem. There were many other attempts in the centuries between then and the 19th century, of varying popularity and limited success. Zionism - the reality of the Jewish people originating in Israel - is not an American invention, it is the very core of Jewish existence and originated natively in Israel over 3000 years ago [2].
0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_revolt_against_Heracl...
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Zionism
3. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-population-in-th...
Not against Israel (and certainly not in favor of the Arabs) - but rather against Dayan and Ben-Gurion's strategy of calculated provocations against Syria and Egypt. Dulles had actually decided in favor of providing arms to Israel by the end of late 1955. But his hand was tipped by Israel's severely destabilizing actions (most notably Operation Olive Leaves), and most decisively by Ben-Gurion's calculated decision to also conceal these plans from Washington.
The other narratives that you're presenting above are similarly problematic. You aren't even using the term Zionism correctly. It isn't about the geographic origins of the Jewish people; but rather specifically about the idea of setting up a 19th-century-style nation-state in their interest -- by definition (and in every dictionary and encyclopedia definition you will find) an intrinsically modern concept. Nor is it "core" to Jewish people in general, only to some.
I wish we could explore these topics further. Unfortunately, you are attributing statements to me that I simply didn't make (I never said that the American Zionists were "the center of the movement", or even remotely implied as much), which suggests that continued discussion is unlikely to be productive.
Many active zionists use the term this way, and not in the way you do. Secular Zionism of Hertzl was indeed more prominent, but already in 1902, Mizrahi organisation already saw a completely different concept of zionism, which didn't identify itself with European nation-state nationalism of 19th century. Ironically, both of these views are still Ashkenazi inventions. But most of israelis are not Ashkenazi, but Mizrahim. Role of Jerusalem in these communities, desire to live in historical Israel and restoration of Jewish state of Palestine is something which is completely forgotten.
And while zionism as state-building was not the focus of the jews, zionism as resettling to Israel was always a thing. My own family has been dispersed after expultion from Spain, and while most moved to Italy, some people (I forget the name) decided to move to Jerusalem instead. There always were sizable Jewish communities in the area, and immigrating there was a decision that people did take sometimes.
I don't think this is an accurate assessment. The state department publicly condemned Britain, France, and Israel and convinced them to withdraw: "In response, the Eisenhower administration, concerned about dissociating the United States from European colonialism—especially in light of its strident condemnation of the Soviet intervention in Hungary the same week—as well as the possibility that the Soviets would intervene to assist Nasser, pressured Britain and France to accept a United Nations ceasefire on November 6. Moreover, the United States voted for U.N. resolutions publicly condemning the invasion and approving the creation of a U.N. peacekeeping force." [0]
> The other narratives that you're presenting above are similarly problematic. You aren't even using the term Zionism correctly. It isn't about the geographic origins of the Jewish people; but rather specifically about the idea of setting up a 19th century-style nation-state in their interest (and of resettling large numbers of people to a place where their ancestors had not set foot in for well over a millenium) -- by definition (and in every dictionary and encyclopedia definition you will find) an intrinsically modern concept. Nor is it "core" to Jewish people in general, only to some.
Firstly, there are many variants of Zionism. It existed since Jews lived there in antiquity, though it did not have the name. The most important modern version is the Basel Program [1]. "Zionism seeks to establish a home in Palestine for the Jewish people, secured under public law" was the official purpose. Note that Jews first sought to obtain this secured homeland by appealing to the Sultan of Ottoman Empire (which was rejected several times). As the Sultan said, "My people have won this Empire by fighting for it with their blood and have fertilised it with their blood. We will again cover it with our blood before we allow it to be wrested away from us." Additionally, many Jews lived in Israel since antiquity (Old Yishuv), many more throughout the middle east (Mizrahim, Sephardim), and many more visited Israel. But yes, Jews had been forcibly removed from the area for ages, and went about their lives as best they could elsewhere. That no more breaks their connection to the land than Native Americans being put on reservations breaks their connection to lands in America.
> It isn't about the geographic origins of the Jewish people
It explicitly is. The general need for a state was acknowledged, but the reason it was in Israel is because of the geographic origin there. Again, Jews repeatedly moved back to Israel, prior to the ideation of a modern Jewish nation-state. This is a fact, and labeling as problematic is itself problematic and anti-historical.
> Nor is it "core" to Jewish people in general, only to some.
All of our stories take place in Israel or near it. Zion, Israel, Jerusalem, are mentioned thousands of times in the Torah and Tanakh [2]. Every Jewish person (or guest) who has participated in a Passover Seder has heard the words "Next year in Jerusalem" [3] for at least the last 600 years. The origin of the Jewish people in this place is explicitly the core of the religion and core to the history of the people, including the nonreligious ones.
0. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/suez
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Zionist_Congress#Basel_P...
2. https://ferrusca.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/th...
To keep things simple, I was referring to the definition of the Basel Program. My only strong beliefs about the situation otherwise are that everyone should feel safe and at home in the place of their birth, no one should be pushed out of anywhere (except under very narrow circumstances) -- and there is never a justification for acts of terrorism (or state terrorism), or the deliberate (or negligent) targeting of civilians in any context.
From there, the rest is a matter of detail and interpretation.
I put on my history hat and check the books
> Liberia's Ambassador to the United States complained that the US delegation threatened aid cuts to several countries.
> After a phone call from Washington, the representative was recalled and the Philippines' vote changed.
> After considering the danger of American aid being withheld, France finally voted in favour of it. So, too, did France's neighbours, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
> [......]
Mind you that I am not calling foul play here, this is par for the course for politics. This is just to refute the quoted point above, unless you consider bribery and threats of sanctions a "nothing".
The reason there aren't more terrorist attacks isn't because various security agencies around the world protect us from them. It's because there are extremely few terrorists.