Betty Bayé: A Reminder That Freedom Isn't Free. AMEN, Walls.

A reminder that freedom isn't free
By Betty Winston Bayé

Faisal Shahzad is a naturalized American and father of two who has lived in the United States for several years and was educated in the United States. He now stands accused of intending to maim and to kill possibly hundreds of New Yorkers and tourists in Times Square last Saturday evening. New York is my hometown. I still have family and friends there, and I'm really feeling this one seeing as how I was in Times Square the weekend before and marveled at all the security. In fact, I commented to one of New York's finest that “I'd never felt safer in my life.”

And who wouldn't feel safe when a police precinct now sits in the heart of Times Square and when uniformed officers on foot, in cars and on horseback are visible every few feet? The day I was in Times Square the weather was great, and though there wasn't any particular event happening, thousands of people were out and about. Everywhere one looked there were people walking, gawking, talking, eating and posing for photos, including one group posing with smiling police officers. Meanwhile, people were exiting or entering the subway, while others were chilling and reading books and newspapers while seated at the tables that have been installed on the mall that's been created out of streets that have been closed to through traffic. There were vendors selling all kinds of stuff, and hawkers were moving about fishing for paying tourists to ride the London-style double-deckers that have become a common sight around Manhattan.

The energy was good, and I was happy. I crossed the mall and patronized a tiny pizza shop where I had a nice conversation with a couple from upstate New York. They were in the city for the just-opened and bigger-than-ever King Tut exhibit. After finishing my pizza, I called a friend in Brooklyn, and she invited me to stop by. I headed for the subway, and underground at Times Square, it was the same story: Police were everywhere.

But a week later, along comes this Shahzad person, and I am aware that no amount of security can be 100 percent sure. Shahzad's alleged dastardly plan to set off a murderous prime-time explosion in the Times Square area went awry because the device he or someone else rigged and placed into a Nissan Pathfinder was poorly made. It kicked up a lot of smoke, however, which drew the attention of some street vendors. They were Vietnam vets, and they had the good sense to bring the smoking van to the attention of an NYPD officer, who in turn had the good sense to believe them and to begin getting people out of the area.

Scary thing, however, is that suspect Shahzad almost got away. He was taken out of his seat on a jetliner at JFK that was about to wing its way to Dubai and from there to Pakistan. Unlike some other terror suspects, Shahzad apparently didn't intend to kill himself. He apparently was quite willing to kill but not to die for the cause. And that makes him a what? Well, for one thing, he's a failure, and some would undoubtedly say a coward. We don't know whether Shahzad was roughed up once he was taken off that plane, but apparently, there was no need for authorities to resort to illegal actions such as waterboarding to get Shahzad to fess up. In fact, word is that the 30-year-old is quite the motor mouth. Authorities say his loquaciousness is providing valuable intelligence about terrorists in our midst and elsewhere that has already led to other arrests. No doubt most of us would want to say to Shahzad: Keep singing, and may you put the canaries to shame.

So, yet again Americans are reminded that there are people itching to kill us, and some future attempt just might succeed. Yet, we must try to live as normally as possible. Otherwise, the bad guys really will win. Meanwhile, in this instance, the accused perpetrator is a brown-skinned person who was born abroad, in Pakistan. Still, there really is no single profile of a terrorist (remember Oklahoma City). Some of these people are homegrown, in fact, and what may drive them to plan, plot and commit mass murder can range from a simple grudge, to a personality disorder, to some grievance, real or imagined, against a particular group of people or the government itself.

Bottom line, however, is that, like it or not, we've all been effectively deputized, because as one of the heroic Vietnam vet Times Square vendors said in an interview about himself and his brethren, “We're used to being vigilant because we all know that freedom isn't free.”

Betty Winston Bayé is a Courier-Journal editorial writer and columnist. Her column appears Thursdays on the editorial page. Read her online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion.