Opinion

Getting rid of the pc shackles

In the wake of the takedown of Osama bin Laden, it’s time to take things to the next level — finishing the job abroad while restoring some sanity to security here at home.

Since 9/11, Americans have regarded al Qaeda with fear and loathing, as if the terrorists are all 10 feet tall. But the newly released photographs and videos of bin Laden show an old man living in squalor that would disgrace your average college student, working the remote control amidst a jumble of wires as he watched video coverage of himself.

The fact is, we have been lucky in our enemies. Since 9/11, most of the plots have been amateurish or inept, severely hampered by the Middle Easterners’ technological incapability. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find Arabs who are any good at this work?” the Saudi terrorist Abu Zubayda, captured in Pakistan in 2002, is said to have asked his US interrogators.

Which isn’t to say that they’re not still dangerous. The cowardly Maj. Nidal Hasan killed 13 unarmed men and women at Fort Hood in 2009. The “playbook” recovered by the SEALs from bin Laden’s “mansion” indicates that the war he declared against America in 1996 very much continues, with bruited attacks on the rail system and the water supply.

Clearly, the only thing al Qaeda leaders understand is a bullet in the head, and the faster each of them gets one, the better. Fueled by historical resentment and ideological animus, they’re never going to quit of their own volition. So it’s great news that Britain’s elite Special Air Service unit will be joining the Americans as we decapitate and dismantle bin Laden’s organization.

And President Obama has now, with his targeted killing of bin Laden, essentially accepted every element of the Bush war-fighting doctrine in the battle against Islamic terror.

This includes the special prison at Guantanamo, whence some of the intelligence that eventually led us to the terror master originated; the sense of national purpose, which continued the hunt long after the trail seemingly had grown cold, and the relentless use of Special Ops — not just as the tip of the spear, but the spear itself.

Obama’s even upped the ante, by surging troop levels in Afghanistan and expanding the use of Predators, like the ones that nearly nailed another finger-wagging public enemy, the American-born Yemeni cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki.

Good for the president for having grown in office. When he resumes the enhanced-interrogation techniques, including (when necessary) waterboarding, and calls off the Justice Department dogs who are still “investigating” CIA interrogators, we’ll have an effective counterterrorism operation again.

But now he should show similar fortitude at home, where the Bush administration got many things wrong, including the PC-driven overreaction that demanded all Americans be treated as potential terrorists when flying — even little kids.

Last month, the video of a TSA goon intrusively patting down a 6-year-old at the New Orleans airport justifiably went viral. Here was a little girl being subjected to the kind of treatment that would be called molestation were it not conducted by a government employee.

This sort of outrage has got to stop. The TSA — an organization that arguably doesn’t even need to exist at the federal level — needs to show the same sort of targeted aggressiveness that the Special Ops units do, and stop playing defense by essentially criminalizing everybody who walks into an airport.

Clearly — unfortunately — we can’t go back to the days when air travel was like train travel. Some sort of reasonable screening process is vital; cockpit doors need to stay locked and hardened. But, like the Israelis, we should be looking for terrorists, not just for weapons.

Which means PC shackles need to come off. Surely the TSA can come up with a system that allows American citizens whose families have been here for generations, who fly frequently and who have no criminal records to board an airplane expeditiously — in other words, the vast majority. If that “discriminates” against recent immigrants and tourists from the Muslim world, tough. There are more important issues at stake than somebody’s feelings.

In short, firmness and clarity of purpose in dealing with Islamic terrorism are key. We didn’t start this fight, but we do mean to finish it — and on our terms.