Why the neutron activator won't work

The plastic bomb that killed 259 victims at Lockerbie last Christmas was invisible to both X-rays and metal detectors. But it would easily have shown up on a new device, the Thermal Neutron Activation detector, which is now being tested at some airports. The technical nature of the device is explained in this issue. But technical devices can only supplement the will of a country, they cannot substitute for it.

The US and other Western governments, their hollow words to the contrary, are neither opposed to terrorism nor willing to defend themselves against it. They prefer to posture and barter to avoid confrontation, for their ultimate purpose is looking good on TV news.

In 1986, US Army major Nicholson, an official US military attache, was shot by an East German guard, and his driver was prevented from giving first aid as his captors watched him slowly bleed to death. Ronald Reagan condemned the act and sent the major's widow his condolences. Then he yawned.

That performance was repeated by Bush when the murder of US Marines Col. Higgins was first threatened and then perpetrated. ("Execution," the media call it, for capitulation to an enemy always begins with adopting his terminology. Would they say John Kennedy was "executed"? Or Lincoln? Or Christ?)

The two events were separated by a long chain of terrorist ac-tions richly rewarded by media publicity (their purpose) and un-checked by Western governments.

Bush could have replied to the criminals' blackmail by demanding Higgins' immediate release on pain of the US donat-ing a bomber to Israel inscribed with Higgins' name; even now (8/8) he could repeat the procedure with Cicippio, plus threaten-ing to destroy Kharg Island so as to cripple Iran's oil revenues which finance the murderers.

Instead, the US government is dealing and dickering with the terrorist states and the gangs they finance; and so, I am sorry to see, is Israel the last one that had a spine.

The roots of this decadence go deep, and they are common to many other symptoms. (A jury and activist judge have just awarded $50 million damages against Korean Airlines, presumably for letting their undefended airliner be shot down by the Soviet Union, which did so after one hour's cool deliberation, and never offered as much as an apology.) The particular symptom of tolerating terrorism is rationalized by two catch-phrases: "Violence breeds violence" and "All revolutionaries started out as terrorists."

To equate revolutionaries with terrorists is an insult to Jeffer-son, Franklin, Washington, Garibaldi, Joan of Arc and a hundred others who fought the armed enforcers of oppression. Terrorists do no such thing: they are criminals who indis-criminately murder the innocent as a publicity stunt. To confuse the two is to accuse George Washington of murdering children in order to make the newspapers write about his professed aims.

To return to the neutron detector, it is, like any other techno-logy, a device that deserves to be defended from technophobes and superstition mongers (though not necessarily from account-ants or engineers). But it is also a strong reminder that nuclear or any other technology is not an end in itself; it is useless for a society that lacks the will and purpose to use it.