11 Planes And No Place To Go

Now isn't that a thrill. Some things got lost at Tripoli airport. No, they didn't lose someone's luggage. Would it were that simple. They lost eleven air planes. Big ones. Airbuses, most likely, as those were the predominant type of plane there.

We are talking planes that can cross oceans.  These planes were taken in an attack on Tripoli last month. It is claimed they were taken by an unaffiliated terrorist group called the Masked Men Brigade. Their leader, Mokhtar Belmokhtar separated himself from Al Qaeda and now seems to be more of a wild card player.

There seems to be little doubt that these planes will be used to attack someplace, sometime. When and where is anybody's guess because Belmokhtar seems to have many axes that he wants to grind.

Considered opinion seems to be either some rival group someplace in the Maghreb or the oilfields of Saudi Arabia. Since we have not made our country self reliant on energy, for reasons unknown, that would be highly damaging to our economy which is at a very fragile point, for reasons unknown. (OK, those "reasons unknown" remarks were sarcastic. They were intended to be.)

It seems to me that the quick and dirty solution is to find the planes and blow them up on the ground. With our capabilities, how can we not find eleven big airliners being protected by a bunch of unwashed terrorists. 

It is a dangerous world out there. I constantly preach to people that they must have situational awareness. Know who is around you and what is going on around you at all times. Our country seems to be losing it's ability in situational awareness. Either we don't know what is going on or we choose to ignore what we know.

So we are faced with bad practice or bad policy. For a government that soaks up so much money, we have a right to expect better.  Half the world expects us to be able to protect them, but lately we don't even seem to have the ability to protect ourselves.