Terrorism, tweezers and terminal madness

In an atmosphere charged with trauma, we've come to view security as a phenomenon of pure cause-and-effect. We're like children in the school playground, who in recounting some lurid tale from the TV news or eavesdropping on some grievous grownup discussion, usually get the facts right but miss the point entirely, failing to scrutinize our opponents' wider intents and purposes. We construe every event, be it mundane or serious, as some glaring weakness in our already overstressed system, outrage erupting every time the next nail file, Popsicle stick, or rubber nose and sunglasses is found lurking in a seat pocket. Even the act of snapping a photograph from a concourse window might earn you a chat with a policeman, a policy that smacks of Iron Curtained Moscow or Bucharest. The cry is always to bolt more doors, deny more access and concoct more high-tech gadgetry.

I'm unsure which would be the better quotation to drop here, Franklin's famous bit about sacrificing liberty for safety, or maybe something more ornery from HL Mencken. Whichever old sage would be more appalled by the goings on, we're more than happy to empty our pockets, rat out our neighbors, pull down our pants. Enough of us, at least, to keep the beast fed and happy. This is what we want: if it equates to safer flying, or more accurately the perception of it, by all means, yes, x-ray my Nikes and take my nailclippers. The TV cameras and newspapers have quoted us time and time again, acquiescing with a sigh: "Well, it sucks, but if it makes flying safer I'm all for it."

But what if it doesn't?

Neither all the determination in the world, nor the most sweeping regulations we dare codify, will outsmart a cunning enough saboteur. Preferring a path of lesser resistance, terrorists will fight along a moveable and eternally porous front. Even our leaders admit this, yet over and over, even as we languish in security lines to have our luggage and dignity eviscerated, we give in to the notion that just about anything, no matter how illogical, inconvenient or unreasonable, is justified in the name of safety.

As airplane nuts in junior high school, my friends and I spent virtually every weekend roaming the terminals of Boston's Logan International Airport. I came to know that airport as one learns the way from bedroom to bathroom at 4 a.m. Being kids on the verge of our teens, much of our time there was spent engrossed in pranks and unauthorized snooping. Logan became an amusement park of dastardly challenges. We sauntered through metal detectors, rode carousels through baggage rooms, crawled through hatchways and sneaked into stairwells. At one point we knew the doorway codes to several secure areas.

Our most cherished activity, though, was gaining access to the airplanes themselves. We'd stake out the gate of an arriving flight, then ask an exiting agent or crewmember if we could take a peek at the cockpit. Cordial captains would give us tours, inside and out, of our favorite planes. On some occasions we were told to go ahead, unsupervised, often by the captain himself. "Just don't monkey around with anything." Or, more daringly, we'd simply stroll down the enclosure and step aboard.

Once, as seventh graders, two friends and I spent more than an hour in the cockpit of a Northwest DC-10, utterly unbeknownst to anyone besides ourselves. A mechanic came aboard for a check and found us in the pilots' chairs, seatbelts on, pretending to be airborne over the ocean somewhere. This was the late 1970s. The threat of terrorism, mind you, was not some nascent fear in the backs of people's minds.

Looking back at my forays at Logan, was security dysfunctional, begging for acts of sabotage? No, not really. In essence it's no different than today. Isn't flying safer than it used to be? Probably, but it was never particularly dangerous to begin with -- not thirty years ago, and not the day Mohammed Atta and his henchmen walked aboard with a stash of knives, boxcutters and mace. Antipodal as it may sound in the current climate, the true deadly weapon on Sept. 11 wasn't anything tactile. It was surprise. The tool of choice, had it been boxcutters, butter knives, or bare knuckles and a shod foot, was effectively unimportant. We needn't scapegoat airport workers, the FAA, or anybody who wears the uniform of an air carrier.

Lost in the outcry is the realization that incidents of terror are more the inevitable work of statistics and politics than examples of carelessness or incompetence. Just as the War on Drugs will not vanquish the supply of illicit narcotics, the War on Terror will not eliminate the supply of angry radicals. Unable to acknowledge this constructively, our stupor is unrelenting. We're asked to accept some "new reality" of air travel, one in which irritation and fear have become institutionalized, when in fact the risks aren't much different than they were ten, twenty, or thirty years ago.

In spite of these threats, and to a large extent in spite of ourselves, air travel remains safe. My self-interests aside, I'll assure you of the system's integrity. I'd like to say more than "get out there and fly," lest I echo some of the more infantile examples of leadership tossed our way -- as if there's nothing more noble or patriotic than to spend as much money as possible -- but truly my best advice is for the public to overcome its squeamishness.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson to be dug from the rubble of Manhattan is the one we're most afraid of: no system is, or ever will be, foolproof. Sobering, but we could use some cold water. What colder than conceding the more or less unstoppable, hit-em-where-they-ain't resourcefulness of terrorism? Sound, competent security greatly improves our chances, whether against the concoctions of a single deranged individual, or organized terror from the caves of Central Asia. But with the advent of every new technology or pledge of better safeguards, we correspondingly inspire the imaginations of those who wish to defeat us.

Hence it's time to address the terrorism issue systemically. Defusing the rage of angry radicals is a long-term anthropological mission for our leaders, not an excuse to barricade public spaces or subvert civil liberties. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of Semtex, and there's little to gain by bogging down resources in what amounts to a feel-good fantasy. At best, our implacable quest to protect ourselves makes our exceptionally safe skies that much safer. At worst, it's paranoid overkill undermining both security and freedom.

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