The small price to pay for our safety

Like many of you, I pray every day that God will keep my family and my country safe from the threat of terrorism.

With the busiest travel period of the year upon us, many are concerned that the Transportation Security Administration’s newly implemented body-scan machines violate their 4th Amendment rights and shouldn’t be used as the prevailing screening device in airports around the country. If a traveler refuses to go through the body scanners, TSA protocol calls for him or her to undergo a more enhanced pat-down procedure.

More than 40 million people were expected to travel over the Thanksgiving weekend. We must ask ourselves, Are we willing to sacrifice our safety to protect our personal freedoms?

You know what I think? Keeping us safe in the “friendly” skies should be our top priority. The TSA isn’t our enemy, friends. Our enemy is Al Qaeda, and this is one instance when I can say that I don’t mind if Big Brother government steps in to keep those who want to harm this country off our airplanes.

How soon we forget. The threat to our airport security didn’t end with Sept. 11. Just a year later, Richard Reid pleaded guilty to terrorism for his attempt to blow up an airplane by detonating a shoe bomb. Last Christmas Day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded a plane with a powerful plastic explosive sewn into his underwear. Luckily he was unable to detonate the explosive on the plane and was apprehended. However, we can’t always rely on luck.

Just think, if Abdulmutallab had been forced to go through the body scanner or pat-down, he never would have been able to board that plane.

In a recent New York Post editorial, U.S. Rep. Peter King pointed out that, unfortunately, the media has once again slanted the debate and created a frenzy. He wrote, “If you listen to the debate you get the impression that one day the TSA said, okay, let’s make everybody naked on the body-scanners. And without any idea of the eight or nine years of what’s gone on before and what’s been tested.”