Crazy man

Thursday December 8, 2005 - 3:30PM EDT

I'm liking what I am hearing about this movie Syriana. After watching Clooney on Charlie Rose a few weeks ago and hearing more about it I am more excited. It is a thinker's movie like Lord of War but I think it will be much more expansive. I am kind of afraid though that the movie will take the formulaic stance of issue division and try to make everything black and white while ignoring the uncertainity and far reaching interconnections and complexities of reality.

So I hear that they are "defending" the shooting in the Miami airport of a crazy man who didn't have a bomb. I don't get this. They fucked up. And are using their own paranoia as reason enough to take extreme action. Why can't they just say, we fucked up, the system for stopping bombers is piss poor and we know this, we are trying to figure out something better. No they won't do that. They will just point to their own jumpiness as reason for shooting a crazy man. Problem is that if he did have a bomb he already got on the plane and into the airport and had a bag with a bomb in it. I'm not confident in my safety when the bomb is already in the airport and my last line of protection is two guys with glocs trying to take that one hit kill shot before some psycho pushes a button. I just can't defend that as trade off for blowing away a crazy man. The Air Marshalls were no protection and what they did wouldn't have been any help if he had a bomb. All they did was kill a crazy man. If he had a bomb they probably would have failed miserably and we would be talking about 10 people killed in a bomb blast. Instead we are talking about defending air marshalls' shooting. It makes no sense.

You have to admit here that you fucked up and that there has to be a better way. That is the least you could do. You can't possibly defend a crappy system, I don't get that. Defending a crappy system simply to appease the psyche of the people is doing more damage than good. I know I'll hear some clowns say something like, well these marshalls did their job and stopped a possible terrorist attempt. No they didn't, they just killed a crazy man. What actually happened here? This is not hard. Two air marshalls shot a crazy man who said he had a bomb. Here is the ironic part. The air marshalls somehow have no faith in airport security because they were jumpy enough to pull the trigger when supposedly air security is suppose to not let bombs in. They had to be thinking how this man got a bomb onto the plane and it can't be. But they made the decision that the outside chance that he got past security warrented shooting. How well trained are these air marshalls. Apparently the guys wife was frantic saying he was a psycho who didn't take his medicine. The air marshalls analyzed the situation and made the wrong choice. Let's be clear about that. Don't say they made the right choice because they didn't. If they did that means they would have the right to kill anybody who in their own judgement was dangerous regardless of outcome.

This is the dilema of law enforcement. Just admit they fucked up thats it. Put it in the memory banks and use it for future prediction. I love how the Florids marshalls director said it was a textbook scenario. How the fuck is it textbook, he is taking half of what happened and calling it textbook. Does the textbook say that you will kill unarmed crazyman and probably regret it for the rest of your life. I'm not in law enforcement but I highly doubt any scenario is textbook. The officers probably realize their mistake but hopefully they don't take it too hard. I just hate the official statements that looks to justify or clear anybody of making a mistake. That is all I want. Realization that this scenario wasn't "textbook" and that being a law enforcement agent comes with these risks. This is more of that mindset of improper anlaysis and eschewing the consequences as long as you reason with it yourself in your head. Why do they do that? What harm would it have done if they said this was a bad day and we messed up and they made the wrong choice. I thought quality of choice was determined by outcome not preconcived notions. Do they think they help the marshalls by defending them. They killed an unarmed person unless they are that rare cold sociopath I think very little of what some big wig says has an effect on what they are going through. If I clearly messed up I'd be trying to figure out what I missed and didn't see to lead me to the wrong decision. I couldn't resolve my mistake on what I thought would happen. That shit ain't good enough. We learn that when we are kids. Well some of us do.