Resilience marks
heart of AmericaThe issue: The country steps
toward a new year much changed
and much the same.THE division of time that is a year, January through December, seems arbitrary in the aura of Sept. 11. More meaningful would be to define 2001 in segments of before and after. The pursuits and ambitions, the concerns and issues of the before were rendered trivial on that fine fall day. We had fussed over noisy frogs from Puerto Rico and food from the police cellblock, niggled about consent decrees and creationism, squabbled over street racing and stem cells.
All paled in the after.
Only months before, we had righteously slipped a needle into the vein of a terrorist homegrown in our heartland, his long, thin face as untouched by the emotion of his execution as it was in causing so many deaths in Oklahoma City. Then another thin face replaced his as the icon of terrorism, blown in with the gray powder that seconds before had been brawny New York skyscrapers. Through the mundane routine of the mailbox slipped a different powder, this time a whitish milling with as much potency to kill as planes smashing into buildings.
The physical attacks were but the first in a relentless array of strikes on our souls and psyche. A wounded economy bled tens of thousands of jobs and paychecks. A series of feigns and warnings found fissures in our sense of security and national might.
Confronted with what before had been unimaginable, we stuttered and listed. In absorbing a new reality, we struggled to wipe away the counterfeit values that before had usurped and masked what was truly precious.
In the days after, we regained a benevolence that had drifted away through an egocentric atmosphere. We were nice to each other, more careful and kind in action and word. We rallied behind a president some had thought callow and illegitimate in gaining his office. A renewed patriotism swelled.
As we move to another year, dispositions again will likely shift. Already the images of terror are fading along with the altruism that enfolded us. It is not that we no longer care, but that life goes on. The pride -- some would call it arrogance -- of being a citizen of America contains an ability to persevere, to take a hard one up side the head, shrug and pick up where we left off.
And all that stuff that came before? They were not unimportant, only trivial by comparison. Yet it is the petty as well as the historic and everything in between that compose the substance of America. We bicker and debate and discuss and exchange ideas and beliefs and theories. America is noisy, messy, sometimes chaotic. Always has been, and, let's hope, always will be.
Screeners at airports
shouldn't be recycledThe issue: A false alarm of a
security breach resulted in the
shutdown of Honolulu Airport.SLIPSHOD performance of the kind that resulted in a two-hour shutdown of Honolulu Airport on Sunday prompted Congress to federalize airport security to upgrade the screening of baggage. Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Transportation has backed away from that effort, dropping its requirement that screeners be high school graduates.
The federal takeover is aimed at replacing security companies that had won low-bid contracts by paying minimum wages to screeners with operations run by people who would be provided good pay and benefits. Simply increasing the compensation to the same screeners will not serve that purpose.
Honolulu Airport was shut down after a screener at a Hawaiian Airlines security checkpoint spotted an image of a handgun on an X-ray monitor and then proceeded to allow passengers to pass through. The airport was reopened after airport officials concluded the sighting was of a false image of a gun that was placed on the X-ray as a test of the alertness of screeners; the passenger to whom the gun image was attributed was carrying only a jacket and a compact disc player.
Both the screener and her supervisor, employees of Wackenhut Corp., have been taken off the checkpoint and assigned to be retrained and recertified. Even if they lack high school diplomas -- as do a quarter of the present national airport security work force of 28,000 -- they may be qualified for pay raises under upcoming federal operation.
The guidelines of the newly created Transportation Security Administration say applicants for screening jobs must have a diploma or "one year of any type of work experience that demonstrates the applicant's ability to perform the work of the position." The agency also is expediting the naturalization process for some screeners, since the guidelines call for all screeners to be U.S. citizens.
"We're dealing with very sophisticated and trained individuals who are trying to blow up our commercial aircraft," says James E. Hall, until recently chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. "These screeners are going to be an important line of defense, and it seems to me we should have higher educational standards for them. If all we're doing is recycling the existing screeners, why have we made this tremendous investment in creating a federal work force? It sends the wrong message."
Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, Publisher
Frank Bridgewater, managing editor 529-4791; fbridgewater@starbulletin.com
Michael Rovner, assistant managing editor 529-4768; mrovner@starbulletin.com
Lucy Young-Oda, assistant managing editor 529-4762; lyoungoda@starbulletin.comRichard Halloran, editorial page director, 529-4790; rhalloran@starbulletin.com
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin (USPS 249460) is published daily by
John Flanagan, contributing editor 294-3533; jflanagan@starbulletin.com
Oahu Publications at 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-500, Honolulu, Hawaii 96813.
Periodicals postage paid at Honolulu, Hawaii. Postmaster: Send address changes to
Star-Bulletin, P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802.
