Every time I go to the United States (I have just returned from two weeks
in Washington), I am astonished by the antic security, by the proliferation
of admonitions and alarms and inchoate fear. Now it is illegal to carry toothpaste
on airplanes. I find myself wondering: Is this just another spasm of periodic
hysteria, like Prohibition, the Sixties, and a Commie Under Every Bed? Or
is it calculated political programming?
Most of it impinges at best lightly upon reality. For example, measures for
security at airports are largely useless—if their purpose is to increase
security. Think about it. Time and again the public-address system warns that
vehicles left unattended in passenger-loading zones "may be ticketed
and towed.” Why? By the time anyone notices that the truck is unattended,
by definition the driver will be somewhere else. He will certainly be able
to walk a hundred yards before the tow-truck arrives—and push the button.
Boom. In the case of a suicide bomber (which is what we are worried about,
no?) it doesn’t matter anyway. Boom.
For that matter, at any airport you can drive up, load a hundred pounds of
suitcases containing god knows what onto a baggage cart, and go into a crowded
waiting area. Boom. You probably couldn’t get them onto an airplane.
Why would you need to? Terroristically, killing two hundred people in the
airport is as good as dropping an airliner.
Most of security is just theater. Over and over, the PA system tells you
not to leave baggage unattended or it may be destroyed by security personnel.
This doubtless serves to make legitimate passengers watch their luggage. Who
cares? A suitcase full of bras and socks isn’t perilous. But none of
this keeps a terrorist from leaving a baggage cart and walking for two minutes,
far enough to be outside the blast radius.
No, I’m not giving ideas to terrorists. Everything in this column is
obvious to anyone with a three-digit IQ.
It gets sillier. If you ride Metro, Washington’s subway, you will incessantly
hear things like, “Passengers! Look up from your papers occasionally.
Be alert! Report any suspicious behavior to Metro employees.”
Yeah, sure. As a security measure, this is worthless. Why? First, a terrorist
would be careful not to look suspicious. Second, what is suspicious behavior
on an urban subway? You’ve got rastas, Goths, spike-haired young in
leathers, semi-derelicts, blacks from the slums, people from India, Guatemala,
Morocco, drunks, stoners, people talking to Mars through the transmitters
the CIA put in their teeth, and swarthy men speaking languages you can’t
identify. What’s suspicious?
So how do report any of this? You could get off the train at the next stop,
go up the escalators, and find the Metro kiosk by the exit gates. You find
a bored guy inside waiting for his shift to end.
“Hey, I saw this suspicious guy on the train!” you say.
“Yeah? What was he doing?”
“He had a backpack, and he was looking around a lot like he was nervous,
and I think he was sweating.”
Oh. By now the train you were riding has left. The attendant has two choices.
He can call in an emergency, have the train halted at the next stop, tie up
the whole system at rush hour, and have police search the train, for a guy
who looks like he might be sweating. Now, that’s a career-enhancing
move. Or he can brush you off. Real world: Which?
Have you ever been on an urban subway at rush hour—which of course
is when a terrorist would strike? They are madhouses. People are packed so
tight they can hardly move. Everybody is thinking, “Come on, come on,
get this damned thing moving.” Suppose you are aboard, and you see what
appears to be a forgotten briefcase. What do you do?
The train is now sailing through the tunnel between Rosslyn Station and the
Pentagon. Nobody can move an inch. You could scream, “Bomb!”
However, the odds are much better than 999 to 1 that it isn’t. Years
have passed since 9/11, with no terrorism on Metro. People leave things on
trains all the time. Let’s say that you do scream. Chaos results, people
very possibly are crushed to death in the panic, and someone pulls the Emergency
Stop handle. You have just shut down Metro in rush hour. Further, you are
in mid-tunnel. Oh good. The briefcase turns out to contain two sandwiches
and a report from Agriculture on locust infestations in Chad. You probably
go to jail.
And of course a terrorist would leave the briefcase on a timer to give himself
a few minutes to leave Rosslyn Station and be walking innocently up Wilson
Boulevard when the thing went off. Say, five minutes. Real world: What are
the chances that anyone will notice the briefcase, take it seriously, and
clear the train, in five minutes? Zero.
It’s theater. If people actually reported strange behavior however
defined, or if Metro cleared trains for forgotten briefcases until the bomb
squad arrived, trains would never run.
Are security measures going to keep terrorists out of the US? I just finished
reading De Los Maras a Los Zetas, by a Mexican crime reporter. (I
don’t think it is available in English.) He talks mostly about the drug
trade, but mentions the smuggling of illegal immigrants. In particular he
tells of a tunnel going under the border (estimating that at any one time
about forty such tunnels are active) through which, he says, about 150 illegals
a day passed. All it takes is $2000 or so any you are in the US. There is
no border security, boys and girls. Not against anyone serious. There really
isn’t.
Now, yes, we may well see more terrorist attacks on the United States. We
certainly ask for them. Or they may be prevented by other means. But dramatic
announcements on the subway are going to prevent nothing. Nor are color-coded
terror alerts that you hear every five minutes in airports. What does anyone
do differently when the level is orange instead of green? Cancel reservations?
Wear body armor?
On examination, most of the measures purportedly taken to stifle Terror don’t.
Opening mail without a warrant? It’s pointless once the terrorists know
you are doing it, but effective in intimidating honest citizens. The same
is true of warrantless wiretaps and searches. Does the gutting of habeas corpus
make us safer against terrorists? Or merely suppress dissent by citizens?
The whole business looks remarkably like malign vaudeville, like mummery
intended to accomplish two things. The first is to persuade the foolish that
the nation is At War. Actually only the president is at war. The second, and
I would like to be wrong about this, is to train the public to obedience.
The formula is simple: Keep’em scared and you can do anything. It works.
Americans are rapidly becoming accustomed to Soviet-style surveillance, to
the state’s power to search and spy without restraint, to being barked
at and ordered about by low-level federal employees. People deserve what they
tolerate.
