Mr_Magoo says:

I’m in trouble, because I pretty much always exhibit disgust and anger when I’m going through airport security.

The only problem with the comparison to the Keystone Kops is that they were at least trying to do a good job.

blastum says:

Keystone Kops never shot somebody on the runway because he was mentally disturbed, either.

Frankly, like #1, I am always disgusted, peeved, irritated and bored going through TSA checkpoints. But mostly disgusted. The sad part is you know they’re going to miss the real terrorists.

Central Coast says:

Haven’t seen an Israeli El Al flight hijacked in some time now. Must be something to it… Oh Ya, where talks about the US Government implementing this. Heaven help us. 🙁

doug says:

couple years ago I was going through the security checkpoint and overheard one TSA guy say to another, “Well, I guess we gotta search SOMEBODY.” That person, selected evidently at random, was me.

scientific security at work.

Jim Burrows says:

Why is it always the people that say we’re not doing enough complain when they try to do something more.

It’s not. Nice strawman, though.

For the record, I’ll say it nice and clear. First, they’re doing too much to “stop terrorism”. Second, much of what they are doing is totally ineffective. Third, much of what they are doing damages what’s really important about our country: our freedom and our principles. Fourth, what they could have best done to prevent 9/11 was not adopt a “just go along with the bad guys” posture on hijacking (and other crimes) in the first place.

9/11 was a terrible thing. To lose 3000 people to a single event is awful. But you know what? Bad things happen. You can take reasonable precautions to stop them, but in the end if anyone at all has any freedom at all, someone will do a bad thing and someone will be intentionally hurt. The best you can do is to first, try to discourage it and second try not to encourage it.

Doing both takes balance. You discourage it by maintaining a strong posture–I am not someone you want to mess with. But if you swagger, act arrogant, or like a bully, or do lots of stupid things, you actually encourage people who want to take down the arrogant, stand up to the bully or who just don’t believe you know how to defend yourself.

Our government has been acting like a stupid, arrogant bully. It tries things that are obviously not going to work. It challenges is enemies to “bring it on”. It assumes that we’re so obviously wonderful and on the side of the angels that we will be welcomed by everyone no matter what we do and that we can solve the world’s problems even in places with so little in common with us that we can’t possibly see their view. It invades preemptively based on false or falsified information. Is it any wonder that all this causes more conflict, more danger?

If we are one of the greatest countries that the world has ever seen–and I deeply believe that we are–then we don’t need to run around beating our chests, jumping like nervous rabbits every time someone says “terrorist”, charge off and look for or stir up trouble. All we have to do is embrace our principles, keep aware of what’s going on around us, defend ourselves if attacked, and remember that even in 2001, with our terrible loss we were one of the safest counties in the world.

Pfeh! on all this hand-wringing, finger pointing, nervous Nelly, fear mongering nonsense. We are or were a great nation and we were safer on Sep 10, 2001 than we are today, and freer, and truer to our principles. Thousands of our fellow-countrymen proved how great a nation this is on 9/11 and we do them no honor, quaking in fear of nail-clippers and hair gel.

What we should have don on 9/12 was say, “Wow! We handled that pretty well. Next time, though, we don’t wait until the third or fourth plane to fight back.” and then rebuilt the two damned towers, asking ourselves all the while if there was anything that could be done to insure that in similar circumstances they stay up longer and the facilities and procedures are in place to insure that everyone can escape. How do you get the guy in the wheel chair down, rather than sit and die beside him? Would it be worth changing elevators part way up the building if you could avoid a shaft for air and fire to travel all the way up and down? That sort of thing.

Instead we advertise which days we’re being selectively paranoid on so bad guys know when to lie low and voters know that you’re at least acting like your doing something. We’re keeping nail clippers out of the hands of dangerous maniacs. Oh, boy!

JimB.