THE FEAR OF FLYING

If anything is different after 9/11, it’s air travel, as passengers endure long lines and extra security checks at airports.

My wife and I just returned from a flight to Lancaster, California for a granddaughter’s graduation and had a chance to once again to go through the collective punishment of airport security. Stand in line, show your ID, stand some more, take off your shoes, take off your jewelry, take your computer out of its case, put all metal objects in the container and slide it to the gaping mouth of the scanning machine. This is the way airport security subjects each law-abiding passenger to collective punishment while presenting almost no deterrent to a determined suicide-killer.

It is a futile exercise designed to provide the illusion of security, not the real thing. The millions of dollars spent on superficial charades such as airport passenger screening is merely pablum for the masses intended to soothe politically motivated hysteria.

It's also unpleasant. Passengers must virtually disrobe, stripping off jackets, jewelry, belts and usually shoes to pass through metal detectors. Some passengers have complained of having their persons immodestly searched by hand, in full view of other passengers.

People don’t care because it helps fight terrorists

As my wife and I like to travel a lot, we have gone through this little absurdity many times. On three or four occasions either my wife or I have been pulled out of line and given the body scan routine. We are both white, in our seventies and look nothing like the typical terrorist. Young Muslim people have done all the attacking and bombing, so wouldn’t it make sense that it would be more productive to look to those people for body scans? In some cases racial profiling can be a good thing.

Haven't you ever wondered if at least some of the airport security measures aren't part of a secret government program to see how much humiliation the flying public can take before it rebels? How long before some fed up patriot stands up and yells, "I want to be somebody! I want to wear shoes! I want to smell good!"

There is a reason for all of this big show of security and that is because the Bush administration governs by fear. They keep the people in a constant state of agitation. They keep everyone frightened so that we will all look to the president for protection and know that daddy will protect us.

Certainly the government wants you to feel that daddy will protect you so they set up these elaborate security measures at all the airports and every time there is a terrorist threat, this security increases. The longer the security lines, the safer the public is supposed to feel.

People don’t care because it helps fight terrorists.

While TSA agents swarm around passengers and their carry-on baggage, and check-in baggage is scanned, there is commercial cargo being loaded into the hold of the very same plane you will be flying in without any systematic inspection.

An estimated 2.5 million tons of un-inspected commercial cargo moves through airports nationwide every year. No federal agency monitors this cargo or who's sending it. Your luggage is inspected, but the commercial cargo is not. I guess no terrorist would ever think of putting a bomb in the commercial cargo.

The House has refused to require inspections of all cargo shipped on passenger airline flights. The argument is that technology is not available, and it would be too costly to the airlines. It is estimated that it would take $700 million and the hiring of 9,000 additional inspectors to examine cargo thoroughly on passenger flights at the nation's largest airports.

And did you know that there is no behind-the-scenes security. When airport personnel leave their jobs, their security badges are not necessarily collected and the combinations on the doors leading to the tarmac and the airplanes are never changed.

With the airports laden with the heavy security coverage you would think that other potential targets would increase their security, but they haven’t. Chemical plants are basically unguarded and easy to infiltrate. Nuclear facilities have very relaxed security (There are at least 200 keys to vital areas of nuclear power plants that are missing and no one knows who has them) and port security is almost nil. (Only 1% of cargo containers are inspected).

It seems that the security forces are always working in the past. Airport security seems to forever be looking backwards. Before 9/11, they looked for bombs, guns, and knives. After 9/11 it was small blades and box cutters. Richard Reid tried to blow up a plane and suddenly we all have to take off our shoes. And after that liquid plot a while back, we're stuck with a series of nonsensical bans on liquids and gels.

Some one plants a bomb in his shoes and everyone has to remove their shoes in the inspection line. If a terrorist developed a panty-bomb would TSA start making all women get undressed?

People don’t care because it helps fight terrorists

Do you feel any safer now that the TSA is going through your bags?
None of the airplane security measures implemented because of the September attacks: no-fly lists, secondary screening, prohibitions against pocket knives and corkscrews have had any effect on the real security of our country.

My flying experience since 9/11 leads me to believe that passengers are less afraid of terrorists than they are pissed off with all the delays, parking restrictions, questions, identification checks, frisking and bag searching.

If we're catching scads of terrorists, someone tell me and I'll shut up, but from where I sit, it just looks like people are being cruelly hassled in order to provide the illusion of security, the illusion that the authorities are doing something to combat the terrorist menace.

The Transportation Department's inspector general office conducted undercover tests at 32 airports after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and found screeners missed knives 70 percent of the time, guns 30 percent of the time and simulated explosives 60 percent of the time.

This smoke-and-mirrors security system has worked well to provide the illusion of airport safety with the public living in fear of another terrorist attack and that’s just the way the government wants it. A fearful public is an obedient public.

And people don’t care because it helps fight terrorists.

The California Curmudgeon