As an act of civil disobedience, Nathaniel Heatwole’s hiding box cutters and other items in airplane lavatories was misguided. The North Carolina college student should be punished for his actions, but his expressed mission – to alert airline and federal authorities to weaknesses in airport screening procedures – should not be for naught.

First, despite the bluster from federal officials that Mr. Heatwole’s actions were egregious, his antics should spur improved passenger screening procedures. According to an affidavit from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Heatwole, an avowed pacifist, sent an e-mail to the Transportation Security Administration in mid-September. The subject line read: “Information regarding 6 recent security breaches.” The message was signed by Mr. Heatwole and included his e-mail address. In it he told of six times between Feb. 7 and Sept. 14 when he had taken on board box cutters, blades, a knife, matches, bleach and modeling clay to simulate plastic explosives.

The items were taken on board at airports in Baltimore and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Some were put in Ziploc bags and hidden under sinks on two Southwest Airlines planes. Box cutters were found by Southwest maintenance crews on planes that landed in New Orleans and Houston last Thursday, five weeks after the e-mail warning.

Mr. Heatwole’s actions are not the first time federal officials and lawmakers have been warned of weaknesses in the airport screening process. Last month, the General Accounting Office reported that federal screeners fared poorly on tests to find weapons. Before that the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general reported that new screeners had received substandard training and that they were given tests with obvious answers.

Screeners will never be able to find 100 percent of the contraband, but, with proper training, they should be expected to catch nearly all of it. This is especially true when the TSA receives an e-mail message from someone who warns that he has placed forbidden items onboard planes, a courtesy terrorists will not afford.

Stepped-up security efforts – and multi-billion dollar wars in the Middle East – are useless, however, without diminishing the reason that people from other countries, especially Arab ones, want to harm America and its interests. As long as they despise us, terrorists will continue to do damage with tools as unsophisticated as $2 box cutters.

“Hostility toward America has reached shocking levels,” the United States Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World reported last month. In Jordan, for example, 1 percent of people had a favorable view of the United States in the spring of 2003, compared with 25 percent in the summer of 2002.

While some attribute the anti-American sentiment to the wealth and power of the United States, members of the advisory group, which included Portland lawyer Harold Pachios, said its roots were much deeper. “Surveys indicate that much of the resentment toward America stems from real conflicts and displeasure with policies, including those involving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Iraq,” the group’s report said. “Peace in the region, as well as the transformation of Iraq, would reduce tensions.”

So while it is important to keep box cutters off our airplanes, it is more important to quell the anger that fuels terrorists to use these weapons and others to harm our citizens. That can only be done if the United States engages with other countries to support democratic reforms and struggling economies and to provide real assistance to help solve international problems.