Foiled terrorist plot brings renewed sense of vigilance

Air travel -- especially involving flights on some international routes -- slowed to a crawl Thursday after British authorities uncovered a deadly plot by terrorists, and the world has probably entered a new era of travel. During this era, at least for the foreseeable future, carry-on baggage will be severely limited and almost all liquids will be banned.
It is remarkable that such restrictions were not in place already. Based on what is known about the British plot, it involved multiple perpetrators carrying seemingly innocuous liquids on board -- where they would be combined to form an explosive compound.
This idea may sound new to the man in the airport concourse, but it closely resembles a 1994-1995 plan overseen by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to blow up 11 airliners simultaneously.
"I'm surprised they've waited that long to try this, 10 or 11 years, when the current system still has no way to detect such liquid explosives," said aviation security expert Douglas Laird.
Homegrown again
The rest of us have reason to be surprised -- and more than a little horrified -- that once again the plot did not involve foreign terrorists. U.S. administration officials said that most of the 21 plot suspects arrested in and around London were British citizens of Pakistani descent and Muslims. Suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London's subways July 7, 2005, fit the same profile.
The plot targeted flights from Britain to the United States, particularly to New York, Washington and California. Those destinations should cause Homeland Security evaluators to take a second look at its threat assessment lists, which have been shifting attention (and, eventually, funding) away from major metropolitan areas to petting zoos and flea markets in Plains states.
Blowing up multiple transAtlantic airplanes loaded with passengers could have produced a death toll on a scale of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centers.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff made it clear that this plot was a serious threat, setting it apart from some others that were more hypothetical in their threat to safety and security. "This is not a circumstance where you had a handful of people sitting around coming up with dreamy ideas about terrorist plots," Chertoff said.
Familiar targets
Those who felt that airline travel was safely off the terrorists' charts after 9/11 are finding out that al-Qaida and its imitators and allies are not inclined to abandon a target just because they used it once. Just as 9/11 was the terrorists' second attempt to take down the twin towers, terrorists would be content to use commercial aircraft again in an attack that would both horrify the West and cause enormous social and economic pain.
British authorities are to be commended for strong police work that thwarted this threat. Authorities in every civilized nation are going to have to remain vigilant. The the rest of us are going to have to be prepared for incoveniences and wasted time when we travel.
Given the alternative, that seems like a reasonable price to pay.