Al Qaeda's Underwear Bomb Plot to Bring Down a Passenger Airplane Makes Objections to TSA Pat-Downs a Bit Ridiculous

For many months the Internet has been full of smug comments about the efforts of TSA agents to ensure aviation security. Can you imagine? they'd sneer. Grandmothers in wheelchairs have been patted down. Elderly gentlemen have had their trousers, and the legs within them, examined for explosives. All of us have been inconvenienced, or had our privacy invaded, by these overly zealous federal employees.
 
Now, with the news out of Yemen about an attempted Al Qaeda plot to pack explosives into underwear pouches, those sarcastic criticisms of the TSA's misplaced zealotry seem a bit weak, don't they? It seems undeniable that the world's terrorists are still hell-bent on bringing down U.S.-bound or U.S.-originating airplanes with "undetectable" explosives. And I for one will be grateful for the half-hour delays in boarding flights that are caused by TSA agents patting down the arms, legs, and torsos of passengers.
 
I wonder whether the authors of these caustic anecdotes about TSA extremism will lapse into silence in the days ahead. And though I fully expect them to persist in their smug arrogance about the foolishness of TSA procedures, or about claims that full-body scanners are an expensive waste, I hope that all of us will read their renewed criticism with the careful analysis that such diatribes should receive. Let's hope that in the days ahead, TSA uses pat-down procedures even more frequently and extensively than before.