I wanted to follow up briefly, but in a separate post, to the email below from TPM Reader G.
Speaking very narrowly, I think the comparison between court house security and airline security is inapt since in court houses we’re mainly worried about guns and a criminals who’ve put more emotion than thought into the nature of their crimes. There’s no global movement or conspiracy brainstorming ways to attack local courthouses or prisons for that matter. And in the off chance a criminal got a small amount of plastic explosives into a court house (which is what these pat-downs are looking for) and ignited them it would probably just blow up the attacker and maybe a few other people. The court house won’t be knocked out of the air because it’s a building sitting on the ground. Enough said.
But in some ways, the comparisons seem to miss the point. I find myself agreeing with virtually all the readers that say that this level of security, intrusiveness etc., is just crazy. As G notes, there’ve been zero successful terrorist attacks on planes in the US since 9/11 and perhaps half a dozen attempts — judged by the widest standards. But for all my agreement I find this furor hard to square with what really does sound like the public demand for total security in the sky.
What’s even more worrisome and irresolvable is how much this process amounts to a classic case of asymmetric conflict we can’t possibly win. Our collective responses are almost always comical and clumsy, though given the framework TSA has to work in it’s not clear how they could be otherwise. Somebody uses a shoe? Off with the shoes. Someone tries plastic explosives in their crotch? Pat-downs of your junk. Everyone — I’m sure the TSA and DHS folks especially — has to realize that the odds of any terrorist trying any of these approaches a second time is virtually nil. But in the reactive nature of the enterprise we, collectively speaking, have to carry the reactive baggage of every attempt on our shoulders forever while the bad guys are off to brainstorming the next idea. The pattern is almost comical. Indeed, if we weren’t so mad at the terrorists — and they so mad at us — we could probably all have a good laugh at the Tom and Jerry nonsense we’ve got going here and how much we’re chasing after our own tails.
