OPINION:
Security checks at American airports have become America’s most controversial topic. Most people assume the current system is doing a good job fighting terrorism but is merely too intrusive.
In fact, this system is ineffective and even counterproductive.
Terrorism on American internal flights is a low-frequency threat. It is hard to mount a sophisticated attack from within the United States in the post-Sept. 11 period. The number of potential suicide terrorists on planes is limited, as is the number of good bomb makers.
Out of 14 million passengers during the year, there might be zero to five or so terrorists. To find them by checking everyone else in that huge group more or less equally is virtually certain to fail, especially because terrorists have the choice of so many tactics.
The goal of U.S. internal airport security: To be so impressive that it scares off terrorists, to catch any terrorists who are trying to board and to persuade the citizenry that it is secure. Most of the emphasis in practice is put on the last of those goals.
At a railroad station in California, one of my colleagues was asked by a security screener to show his driver’s license. He started laughing and asked, “Why?”
The guard said back sarcastically, “Haven’t you heard of September 11?”
But that’s why my colleague was laughing. Any terrorist can easily get a valid drivers’ license. Asking for such a document makes the guard (and the public) feel better, but it is worthless.
No doubt, the U.S. government will claim it has kept terrorists out of airports. But this is misleading. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has never caught a terrorist at an airport. And why go through an airport nowadays with any reasonable level of security when you can look for relatively unguarded targets?
That’s what terrorists do. Get your enemy to send all of his troops to guard someplace, then hit at a weak point. For good reason, then, terrorists have moved to other methods and targets. Attackers board passenger planes outside the United States or send freight on unchecked cargo planes.
A lower level of better-quality checking within the United States could get the job of deterrence done better. Indeed, if the terrorists have shifted their priorities, why should the budget, personnel and stringency of an abandoned tactic be continually intensified?
Meanwhile, this massive security effort costs billions and harasses millions in a futile attempt to locate possibly one or two terrorists a year.
One terrorist puts a bomb in his shoes that doesn’t work. Forever after, all shoes must be checked for millions of people? Terrorists plan an aborted attack using a gel. Forever after, all liquids and gels must be banned and thus seized from millions of people?
Counterterrorism resources will always be limited. If they’re thrown away on ineffective tasks, that means less attention can be paid to the real threats. That’s why the Underpants Bomber, the Shoe Bomber, the Times Square Bomber, and even the Fort Hood shooter were not caught by the security system. It was too busy paying for people to pat down or X-ray Americans randomly.
People in authority don’t want to admit this because if there ever is a successful attack on a plane, they don’t want to have been wrong. Prediction: The next time there’s a real threat or - may it not happen - a plane blows up, the investigation will discover that the current system wouldn’t have stopped it. That’s not speculation; it’s what has happened every time before.
Any security system that isn’t completely stupid - and likely to be ineffective - must put the bulk of its resources into looking at those most likely to carry out an attack.
To do intrusive checks on documented American citizens who have no motive for committing terrorism is a waste of time. Put them through the metal-detecting portal, have them put their possessions through the X-rated X-ray machine. If needed, wand them or open bags. That’s enough.
To speak of “racial” profiling of more probable categories of passengers is propaganda. People most likely to carry out an attack don’t constitute a race and aren’t being profiled because of their race any more than Germans or those from communist countries were examined solely for their race in past conflicts.
Is it better to inconvenience 1 percent or 2 percent of all passengers rather than all of them? Yes. Not only is this the greatest good for the greatest number, but it makes everyone - including those who are profiled but innocent - safer. That’s supposed to be the purpose of this whole thing, not as another demonstration of multiculturalism.
In contrast, it is important to have a high level of security for flights arriving from outside the United States. Yet here, too, the focus brought by realistic profiling is needed.
Otherwise, the system is about to be overwhelmed. Terrorists openly announce that they are sending bombs on international cargo flights. Now there will be a huge program to check these as well. And is the TSA going to check each railroad, bus, airport and highway around the clock on the chance of finding some terrorist passing through while an army officer who speaks openly of jihad is ignored until he opens fire? Will there come a point where this all becomes too onerous, time-consuming and expensive?
Perhaps the ultimate weapon of terrorists is not to blow up America but to bankrupt it.
Is a government horrified because an Arizona police officer asks someone stopped for cause whether he’s an illegal alien going to authorize stopping and searching any U.S. citizen with far less reason?
Ultimately, the current airport security system is not only excessive in terms of inconvenience and violation of privacy but, most of all, because it is a terrible way to guard against terrorism.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal. His latest book is “The Israel-Arab Reader,” with Walter Laqueur (Penguin, seventh edition, 2008).
Please read our comment policy before commenting.