Security Succor
If Lucifer bin Laden is not already in, or about to come before, the sights of our noble warriors, I hope that he is traveling through the over-compensating security system that is plaguing American flyers at airports across the country. The upscaling of the pseudo-protective efforts may make some people feel more secure, but only those with bulbs dim enough to think the FBI could have found Theodore Kazinsky without his brother informing on him.
Though there is more searching, it is not more efficient. Though they are confiscating nail clippers and tweezers, and making construction workers take off their steel-toed boots to check for who knows what, it is implausible for anyone sporting a double digit IQ to think the augmented security is going to stop a purposeful psychotic. They are scanning people who need instruction to lift their arms, but letting on board some people who shouldn't be allowed in the terminal.
Linda was flying back from Los Angeles, and found herself sitting next to a drunk. When she made it plain to him that she was not to be his conversation piece, he turned to a young man on the other side. When the fellow was equally unresponsive, the drunk became abusive, calling him a possible terrorist. The young man summoned the stewardess, who told the drunk that if he continued to bother the man, she would have the pilot turn the plane around. Good for her. The threat of five years in federal prison should be enough to sober up anyone. Not too sober; he asked for a beer, but was refused.
I'm not sure what the airlines might do to make flight safer. Step one was to lay off 125,000 employees in the first week after the attacks, and cancel food service on all but long flights. Or well, most of them. On a twenty minute United Express trip from Sacramento to San Francisco, we were served bottled water and snacks. My sister, flying America West from Boston to Phoenix, got nothing but stale air and a weak smile. Whoever thinks this makes sense has been too long plying executive strata without oxygen.
It's kinda weird to see national guardsmen bedecked in camouflage uniforms standing about and patrolling the halls. Kinda because you wonder if those uniforms don't make them targets. If not of potential terrorists, then of passengers needing directions to the washrooms. If there were an attack, I fear these poor fellows would be the first to fall. This would be after the terrorists had slipped by the extra state police standing on the curb, chatting amongst themselves; their sieve-like inattention would allow men with scraggly beards and turbans to walk into the terminal unchalleneged.
I don't fault the police or the security people or the airlines, ultimately. They were barely up to the task in the first place, and racheting up their duties ain't gonna fly. A local national guardsman was told that he would be asked to pace the Redding airport twelve hours a day seven days a week. He told them that would cause more problems than it solved and they stumbled away toward plan "B", whatever that might be. As usual in a post-crisis crunch, common sense is an early victim.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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