Or rather, more cynical than I already am, I’d be pretty suspicious of (at least) two things; airport security, and gasoline prices.
It would look to the cynic as if airport security is primarily done to reassure the public that the government is doing something to stop terrorism. X-raying shoes, a move that doesn’t detect explosives, is just a silly and inconvenient reaction to the “shoe bomber.” Preventing people from carrying on a one ounce tube of lip gloss is also silly. Even if you met up with some other desperate lip gloss carrier and combined the two into a single explosive, you’d have at most two ounces of explosive. A bang, some smoke, but nothing that’s going to blow a hole in an airplane. You’re not going to create a high-powered bomb by mixing two ingredients in a bathroom on an airplane from ingredient that you sneaked on in a one ounce container. 12 ounce bottle of water, maybe, but again nothing real efficient.
Searching small children and grannies in wheel chairs; stupid. Searching young men of middle eastern appearance, probably more likely to accomplish something. I know, profiling is verboten because it equates to racism. Well, racial profiling, arrested for driving while black, is heinous. Profiling for terrorists in airports, not racist. Israel, at ground center for terrorism (before Iraq, anyway) profiles in airports and they’re pretty successful in preventing hijackings. They don’t have the silly security measures we do.
This is what I’d think if I were cynical. I'm travelling for the next few days, so airport security is on my mind. If I can get to a computer, I'll finish the thought about gas prices. For now, off to the airport. Goody!
1 comment:
Thank you, Alan, you're absolutely right regarding profiling terrorists. And it's different than stopping a Black guy in a nice neighborhood driving a nice car-that's more stereotyping than anything else. When we're dealing with international terror, that's the profile.
The tube of lip gloss you're probably right about, though I don't if there's not some type of explosive that could be combined. (Maybe C-4 with a cell phone as a timer.) Still I think your post has a lot of common sense in it.
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