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Americans haven't been watchful enough
by Sarah Littman
published July 12, 2005
Since last Thursday morning, I've periodically had shudders running down my
spine. Every time it happens, I thank the Lord that my children are home safely
with me.
They arrived home late on the evening of July 6, after spending two weeks in
England with their dad. I worry every time they fly anywhere without me or I fly
anywhere without them; My nightmares about crashing planes started long before
9/11. Last Wednesday evening I sat biting my nails during the thunderstorm,
hoping their plane would land safely. I didn't relax until I saw my kids' tired
but happy faces and wrapped them in my arms for a hug.
Waking up Thursday morning to the news of the terrorist attacks in London
brought back emotions I've felt so many times before: 9/11, Madrid, Bali and the
suicide bomb attacks near my relatives' kibbutz in northern Israel and my
cousin's home in Haifa. But the memories go back even further, to when I was a
schoolgirl in London in the early '70s -- how we felt when we'd been to Earls
Court for the boat show and played on the captain's chair of a particularly
luxurious yacht, only to hear on the news that an IRA bomb had been found under
it a few hours later. Or when I was in my 20s, and heard about Pan Am Flight
103, a flight I'd often taken back to New York from visits to my parents in
London, exploding over Lockerbie. I thanked the Lord that one of my close
friends from business school had changed her flight to Virgin, overriding her
parents desires for her to fly an American carrier, and I cried when I learned
that my sister's friend from elementary school had not.
Terrorism didn't start with 9/11; it's just that until then we in the United
States were relatively insulated and thus didn't -- and in many ways still don't
-- have the infrastructure to deal with it. I flew to London on Pan Am two days
after the murder of 259 people on Flight 103 (189 of them Americans, many
students flying home from semesters abroad), and expected the security at JFK
Airport to be as stringent as I'd always experienced in London or flying El Al
to Israel. But other than the TV cameras filming us as we checked in, there was
no discernible difference from previous travel experiences -- there was the same
lackadaisical approach to security as in the past.
Londoners are no strangers to terrorist bombings. The Provisional Irish
Republican Army began a bombing campaign in the 1970s in the aftermath of Bloody
Sunday, and attacks continued for three decades. As an 8-year-old traveling back
and forth on the Underground to school every day by myself 30 years before 9/11,
I was well aware of the need to watch for unattended parcels or suitcases. Yet
here in New York, it's still possible to check briefcases and packages in
restaurant cloakrooms without them being searched. What will it take before we
learn?
The experience of the Israelis and the continuing threats facing our forces and
both foreign and Iraqi officials in Iraq have shown that it's impossible to
completely eliminate the risk of a terrorist attack, particularly when it
involves a suicide bomber. As the Provisional IRA observed in a statement to the
Thatcher government after the bomb attack on the Conservative Party conference
in Brighton in 1984 (which killed five people and injured many more), "Remember,
we only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky always."
It was difficult to sit down with my kids last Thursday and tell them what had
happened in the city they had left less than 24 hours earlier -- a city where
their grandmother, my cousins and so many friends still live. Fortunately, I'd
been able to get through to Granny (after several attempts) before I spoke to
the children, so I could reassure them that she was safe.
However, I was stumped when my daughter asked "Mummy, what does a bomb look
like?"
We talked about how a bomb can be hidden in a suitcase or a parcel, and how if
they ever see an unattended bag or package, they should tell a police officer or
call 911. I didn't have the heart to bring up suicide bombers, even though
eventually I know I must. After all, it's something their cousins in Israel cope
with on a daily basis, though they don't let it stop them from getting on with
their lives.
We Americans had better get used to doing the same.
Sarah Littman, who lives in Greenwich, is author of "Confessions of a Closet
Catholic," published by Dutton Children's Books
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