There’s an article out today which proclaims the United States is currently mulling over the perfectly acceptable idea of toning down its ridiculous and invasive body searches of geriatric airplane travellers, perhaps coming to the same conclusion the rest of us did over a decade ago. The Muslim terrorist bomber who wants to blow up the airplane is most likely not the 75-year-old fourth generation white woman from Idaho, and you really don’t need to check her prosthesis because she had a mastectomy.
Nor does it make any sense to subject children to the same scrutiny, making them hold their arms at their sides for a quick frisk, or running metal detectors up and down their diapers to detect bombs. Not only is it difficult for a child to rationalize the necessity for that level of close inspection, it’s difficult for the parent to watch this garbage taking place, especially when it’s perfectly clear the traveller is an atheistic software developer from California who likes his suicide bombings in Hollywood Bluray format only.
I’m not even talking about making airport security intelligent here, which is probably an impossible task in a country as vast as the United States and with a security workforce paid as lowly as it is. I’m simply talking about raising the level of security from absolute idiocy to somewhere around dimwitted. Because at the moment it’s a giant waste of everybody’s time searching for the one in 10 million travellers who might be a Muslim terrorist suicide bomber, when it’s much easier to look for the profile of the suicide bomber.
Yes, I know there are plenty of stories of people smuggling drugs and weapons and other assorted banned material onto planes in baby carriers and diapers and prosthetic limbs. I know that. But none of these people are blowing up airplanes in the name of Allah, and the security measures that existed before 9/11 were already catching these people most of the time. The sort of people who smuggle illicit items onto airplanes do so because they’re trying to make money, or have been compelled by somebody to do it. Drug mules don’t typically tend to be very savvy, and sooner or later they get caught anyway.
That isn’t really the point, I think. What we’re talking about here is a multi-billion dollar industry of security theatre based on pissing everybody off for the purposes of ensuring nobody is racially profiled. The problem with this approach is that while it’s fundamentally fair from a individualistic perspective, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense when you look at the demography of terrorism. If you were to do that, you could eliminate 99 per cent of your airline traffic from suspicion based on probability odds alone.
Men are more likely than women to be suicide bombers. It doesn’t mean women aren’t capable of being suicide bombers, and Palestinians have proven this against Israeli soldiers on numerous occasion, but in the circumstances of female suicide bombers on airplanes we’re still waiting for the first one to break the gender barrier. So, bye-bye 50% of the population. No need to check the granny panties of Olga from Russia on her way to visit her grandchildren in Michigan.
On the other hand a Nigerian Islamist named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who attended lecures from a radical cleric in Yemen and was president of the Islamic Society of a London University, should probably warrant closer scrutiny. Especially when his own father made a report to two CIA officers at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, claiming his son is going off the deep end for Allah.
I know that on a certain level it’s got to be frustrating to Muslims to have to be singled out for something they’ve never done. But when you belong to a demographic that commits nearly nine out of every 10 acts of terrorism worldwide, you really ought to lodge the complaint with the radicals within your demographic who are giving you a bad name. I mean, as a white male I certainly understand that from a statistical standpoint I’m probably in the demographic most populated by serial rapists.
As I see it, the people responsible for security haven’t really done anything to find and capture terrorists in airports. All they’ve done is look at the Modus Operandi of former terrorists and screen for the potential of an exact copycat attempt. So that means they’ll check your shoes and your underwear and scan your body in a peeping Tom booth, but they’re no closer to actually finding the elusive Muslim terrorist. And the reason for that is he probably doesn’t exist. At least not in the airports.
The next terrorist attack on American or western soil is not going to be another airplane. They fixed that mistake by installing air marshalls and locking the cockpit. Nobody is going to take down a U.S. passenger plane ever again, unless they remove marshalls and open the cockpit again. Oh, and it would also require the compliance of passengers, who by now realize that Muslim terrorists aren’t messing around and they will crash you into a building if given the chance. Before 9/11 it made more sense to let the terrorist talk to the authorities and have their demands met for a million dollars in a Swiss bank account than to rush the men and possibly end up dead. But the certainty of death when you’re dealing with Islamic terrorists means that most people would sacrifice their physical safety in order to save the lives of everybody on board.
But I’m digressing a bit. The next terrorist attack isn’t going to be a conventional attack, and it’s not going to come from a white, Christian senior citizen with a prosthesis boarding an airplane. It’s going to likely be a bomb planted in a train station or an underground parking lot or a bus station, and it’s more than likely that it will be a high yield bomb generating hundreds or thousands of deaths when it explodes. It’s not really a question of if but when. The inevitability isn’t really in question.
So, why are we still wasting time on placebos and security theatre and convention forms of security. It’s far more likely that a terrorist attack in an airport would be perpetrated by a Muslim worker at the airport than a passenger with a specific purpose and a specific destination. If I could use a pop culture allegory, it reminds me of the Simpsons’ episode when Mr. Burns takes Homer through a series of high tech security barriers in the nuclear power plant, only to find that the most valued room is protected by a screen door falling off its hinges. The airport worker is to airport security what that screen door is to Mr. Burns’ high tech security system.
I’m not really saying anything everybody doesn’t already know. The terrorist security infrastructure in the U.S. and Canada is largely a Wizard of Oz smoke and mirrors contrivance meant to impress and annoy us, and make us feel as though we’re being protected. But I think deep down we all go through the routine realizing it’s not actually protecting anybody, nor is searching 300 million Christians a year to find a Muslim terrorist bomber really an effective use of resources.
I will, however, admit that where the U.S. is highly effective is in counter-terrorism. When they spend money on gathering intelligence, putting together special forces teams, creating surveillance on suspected terror cells, and drone striking the hell out of bad guys in Pakistan, it’s usually money well-spent. The intelligence reports pertaining to Iraq notwithstanding, of course.
If there was some way to take the billions spent on security theatre, which accomplishes nothing, and put it into the behind-the-scenes efforts instead, I’d feel a whole lot better. I mean, if I could walk in the airport and cruise through security because any rational person could ascertain in two shakes of a lamb’s tail that I’m not a Muslim terrorist, whilst being aware that this ease of boarding was buttressed by strong covert intelligence and security reports, I’d be a happier camper.
I wouldn’t have to see people humiliate themselves for the politically correct sake of proving they’re not a Muslim terrorist suicide bomber. I wouldn’t have to take my shoes off and walk in socked feet across cold floors that have been waxed and buffed to have all the traction of a skating rink. And I wouldn’t have to adhere to the absurd rules of not being allowed to bring drinking water – you know the stuff that allows human beings to live – onto an airplane because the bozos working the x-ray machines are concerned I’m strapping on the nitro.
