You should never depend on the government to do this sort of stuff and we've done it for a long time. The NACA, before NASA, never developed an airliner and never ran an airline.

He knows that any weapon capable of shooting down a Syrian warplane could also be used by a terrorist against a US airliner. He believes that he is doing the right thing and following the prudent course in waiting for the Syrian conflict to burn itself out in some way while minimizing the long term risk to American lives.

The attempted bombing of a Detroit bound airliner on Christmas Day by a young Nigerian man trained by Al Qaeda in Yemen appeared to open the West s eyes to the country s problems. Following that failed attack, US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown jointly pushed a conference in London to propose solutions for the previously overlooked crises in Yemen.

Al Ahmar has also not benefited from the military aid that the US lavished on Yemen in the wake of al Qaeda s failed Christmas Day plot in 2009 to down an American airliner. While the Central Security Service, led by Saleh s nephew Yahya, has received millions of dollars to fight al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Ahmar has been left out of the economic bonanza.

The same Government that has launched wars and sent its soldiers to die in the name of the fight against terrorism is the one that is now harbouring one of the most notorious terrorists of our times, the mastermind behind the horrendous sabotage of a Cuban airliner with 73 passengers aboard and the person responsible for the murders of many other citizens of Cuba and other nations.

In the last few months, however, a civilian airliner was downed in eastern Ukraine by a sophisticated Russian made missile, tensions have increased around disputed islands in the South and East China Seas, and chaos in the Middle East has continued to spread. The Israeli Palestinian conflict is in one of its worst phases in decades, with the renewed frustration unleashed by the massive loss of civilian life in Gaza likely to encourage extreme reactions.

The huge loss of life in Afghanistan (equal to the United States losses in Vietnam, but in a far shorter period of time) already suggested to many that the Kremlin was becoming a danger to itself the attack on a civilian airliner seemed to confirm that emerging view. It was this realization that spurred Mikhail Gorbachev s rise to power, as well as support among the leadership for Gorbachev s reformist policies of perestroika and glasnost.

Anyone who has ever flown into Russia will know this scene the moment the captain requests the passengers to remain seated until the plane comes to a complete stop, all the Russians on board will respond by immediately standing up and piling into the aisles as if it's their last chance to get out. They know in their bones that the system is out to get them, even if the system is represented by a commercial airliner from a foreign country.