What If... We Didn't Learn?

I'd read this story before, but it may serve as a useful reminder to those folks wondering whether our society's obsession with politically correct beliefs harms us or not...

MICHAEL Tuohey "stared the devil in the eyes and didn't recognize him."

Now he kicks himself for not having acted, although if he had, our government probably would've punished him for trying to take the devil down.

Until recently, Tuohey worked the ticket counter at the airport in Portland, Maine, first for Allegheny Airlines, and then its successor, US Airways. He'll never forget one particular day of his 34 years of employment.

It began like any other. This married Army vet had a routine. He'd wake up at 3:30 a.m. and walk to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee from the machine he'd pre-set the night before. Then he'd flicked on the TV, watch some CNN and check the weather forecast. After feeding his cat, he'd jump in his car for the 15-minute drive to work.

On most days, the big rush would come 6-7:30 a.m. That's when the tiny Maine airport would be abuzz with travelers heading for connecting flights in Philadelphia, Boston and Pittsburgh. But it's what happened at 5:43 a.m. on a particular day that he replays in his mind over and over.

At that time on a Tuesday, two men wearing sport coats and ties approached his counter with just 17 minutes to spare before their flight to Boston. (Tuohey now knows they'd stayed the night before at the Comfort Inn down the road.) And he suspects they arrived late to take advantage of an airline system that was then "more concerned about on-time departure than effective screening."

He thought the pair were unusual. First, they each held a $2,500 first-class, one-way ticket to Los Angeles (via Boston). "You don't see many of those."

The second reason is not so easy to explain.

"It was just the look on the one man's face, his eyes," Tuohey recently told me.

"By now, everyone in America has seen a picture of this man, but there is more life in that photograph we've all seen than he had in the flesh and blood. He looked like a walking corpse. He looked so angry. And he wouldn't look directly at me."

The man was Mohamed Atta. The other fellow ("he was young and had a goofy smile, I can't believe he knew he was going to die that day") was Abdul Aziz al Omari. Michael Tuohey is the individual who checked them in at the Portland airport as they began their murderous journey.

"I looked up, and asked them the standard questions. The one guy was looking at me. It sent a chill through me. Something in my stomach churned. And subconsciously, I said to myself, 'If they don't look like Arab terrorists, nothing does.'"

"Then I gave myself a mental slap. In over 34 years, I had checked in thousands of Arab travelers, and I never thought this before. I said to myself, 'That's not nice to think. They are just two Arab businessmen.' " And with that, Tuohey handed them their boarding passes.

(hat tip: Little Green Footballs). You know, the what-if scenarios about 9/11 will always haunt us. Let's just hope that we don't ignore the lessons learned that day.

I have my own problems with racial profiling, but I wonder about a socity that chooses to safeguard the feelings of people over common sense. Now, I personally believe that our airport security nowadays does not matter to the problem of hijacking. If four or five hijackers jumped up on a plane on which I was traveling today, nothing short of a machine gun would prevent me from going after them myself. But if our police and security personnel are dissuaded from following leads in order to demonstrate sensitivity... well, let's just say we won't be safer. And the deaths on September 11th should have taught us more.