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Are we really safe?

By MICHAEL BOYLAN
mboylan@thecitizennews.com

Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport saw a record number of people go in and out of its doors over recent long holiday weekend. I was one of them, as I picked my friend up on Friday and dropped him off on Monday. I didn’t have to go through any security lines or searches, which was nice, but as I stood in the corral by the escalators I started pondering just how safe the airport was these days.

In the old days, people picking up friends or loved ones could go directly to the gate and escort them to baggage claim and eventually the car. Post-9/11, this was determined to be too dangerous and/or too unwieldy a task, as tens of thousands of people would now have to be screened with the same thoroughness afforded to the soon to be passengers.

In the old days, this meant walking through the x-ray machine and maybe being pulled aside if something looked suspicious or the guards couldn’t determine what something was inside your bag. This typically turned out to be a curling iron or a remote control that was accidentally packed. Today, going through security is a long process of checking everyone’s shoes, pulling aside every fifth (or some chosen number) person, placing certain types of bags a certain way, removing anything metal from your vicinity, answering trick questions about who packed your bag and the list goes on and on and on.

Anyway, today you’re only allowed into to the terminal with a ticket. If you’re picking someone up, you wait in the corral and you stay on the correct side of the red line, if you know what’s good for you. One security guard the other day snapped at a girl who came up the escalators, crossed the line and then crossed back to get back with her parents. If that guard is reading this column, I just want to thank you for yelling at an innocent girl and protecting all of us. We in the corral truly were terrified.

This next part isn’t meant to scare anybody or to draw the Department of Homeland Security’s suspicion towards me, but these measures are not doing much, if anything at all. Example: I am a hypothetical terrorist with a biological weapon and I want to use it on an unsuspecting public. Guess what? I don’t need to get in the terminal or on a plane. I could just sit in baggage claim or stand in the corral and spread my funky little weapon. Heck, if I’m a kamikaze-like terrorist, I just infect myself and stand in the corral or have a drink in one of the bars outside the terminal. Security hasn’t searched me, my name is not listed anywhere and the hundreds of thousands of people leaving the airport and traveling all around the world are now infected and spreading my funky little weapon.

How did I figure this out or even think of such a horrible scenario? I read Stephen King’s “The Stand” and watch “24.”

It is scary, especially when you realize that if this scenario is possible and plausible, so are thousands of others. Take the airport out of the equation and move it to an amusement park or any place where lots of people pass through. You get the same result or maybe even one that’s worse. You probably don’t want to hear this, but now that the terrorists have used airplanes as missiles, they probably won’t ever do it again. Why not? Partly because it is now harder for them to get on a plane, but also because they have already done it. Terrorism depends on the element of surprise. It is meant to scare people more than it is meant to kill people. The thousands of people who died on 9/11 were definitely victims, but so were the hundreds of millions of people whose world changed forever on that day. Those horrendous acts inflicted pain, misery and terror on almost the whole planet. The terrorists were thinking globally, not locally.

You and I both know that the airports, though marginally safer, aren’t really all that safe. All of these security measures may make people feel safe and give the illusion that they are doing everything in their power to protect us, but it’s not doing that much. Consider this, we have all heard the stories of people who haven’t been allowed to take nail clippers or sewing kits on airplanes, but smokers can bring lighters or matches on board, right? What’s more dangerous on a plane, nail clippers or fire? Any 14 year old pyromaniac or former viewer of MacGyver can tell you that a disposable lighter and a can of hairspray, also allowed on a plane, can create a makeshift flamethrower. But Al-Qaeda couldn’t possibly know that, right?

There were terrorist acts committed on this soil before 9/11, such as the World Trade Center in 1993, the Oklahoma City Federal Building, Centennial Park, and yes, most likely and unfortunately, there will be more. I’m not saying we should give up security measures; nor am I saying we need to go overboard and start strip searching everyone. I am calling for a national policy of getting real and that probably means more security cameras, more police officers and more funding put in to a better designed intelligence force. All of this means more money. This country has spent well over a hundred billion dollars on this war with Iraq in an effort to make the U.S. safer from terrorists. Are you sure that money went where it could serve us best as a nation?