An Opportunity for Leadership

Ted Bromund / January 06, 2010

The TSA’s announcement that citizens of fourteen countries – Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen – will be subject to intensified airport screenings before being allowed to fly to the United States, and that flights originating in or passing through one of these nations will also face extra scrutiny, is both a problem and an opportunity.

The problem is that, on its own, this measure will achieve relatively little. As James Carafano points out, any effort to erect Maginot Line defenses at every airport will fail. The best defense is not more intensive passenger screening in an airport: it is disrupting plots before they reach the airport. And many of the most effective ways to do this, as he points out, revolve around better information sharing, both inside the U.S. government and between the government and its international partners in an expanded Visa Waiver Program. (more…)