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Newspapers and the air waves have been filled with “security experts” saying that we all are going to have to get accustomed to being electronically stripped at the airports. I have a few thoughts for those folks: how about you guys just strip naked and fly around the country to show us how it is done?
Seriously, one of the dumbest comments from a so called expert I’ve seen is that an electronic strip search is no worse than putting on a bikini at the beach. Well, first off, I never wear one, but comparing the two is a little like saying it is okay to rape a woman just because she’s had sex. You see, women put on bikinis because they want to, not because it is imposed on them. They do it to go swimming, to lie on the beach in the sun and, yes, to be sexy. It is their choice, just as women in Europe and a few here decide to take off their tops.
There is nothing of an inviting sexy nature in being forced to submit to a full image scan in order to take an airline flight. That is an invasion of privacy. Just because a woman might choose to reveal a lot of her body at the beach, for whatever reason, it does not follow that she, or anyone, has sacrificed her right to privacy. No one, other than the person, owns this right, nor can anyone claim it based on their own assumptions.
On a personal level, I have a problem with the whole idea that there are “experts” in the field of combating terrorism through security. This is a new kind of warfare and as soon as someone becomes expert in one aspect of it, the threat has changed dramatically. We had experts coming out of our ears after 9-11, 2001 and here’s a simple question: how did they get to be expert so fast? Where were they during the run up to the hijacking of the aircraft to be aimed at New York and DC?
Keep in mind, at all times, when watching a so called expert on a news program that many, if not most, have ties as consultants or as former employees with corporations with a stake in the outcome of public debate. Just as the retired generals were revealed as special pleaders for the Pentagon and the defense establishment, the experts who pop up on television programs should be required to name their connections and other business dealings. Even without a specific, paid bias, virtually all of the experts have agendas, based on their background and former employment.
How do you become an expert in a new field?
There have been terrorists attacks for decades, of course, and someone who has come up through law enforcement and criminal studies could logically apply that knowledge to the new field. Does that make that person an expert? What the hell is an expert anyway? Often, it is nothing more than a person with some background in a given field who is willing to talk about things to which there are no immediate answers. In other words, someone who can cast a good spell of bull.
I would like to nominate as the next expert for CNN or any other cable or national news channel any person who manages to anticipate, and stop, a developing terrorist attack. I don’t mean someone in the CIA who gets a tip and, next time, actually follows it, I mean someone who concludes what is likely to happen and finds a way to stop it. Then, go on the news channels and talk about all you know and how we have to get ready for the next one after that.
You can now enroll in college courses on terrorism related security and you can get a degree in the field. Does that make you an expert? Is a newly minted doctor an expert on everything medical? No. Experience counts and years on the job help too, but virtually none of the so called experts would have predicted a bomb in a guy’s underwear. The whole thought is too unreal, like a bad joke turned into a horror movie.
Often, all it takes to be labeled an expert is to have a good television appearance and be seen a few times on one or more channels. Then, the bookers for other channels seek out the expert they’ve seen elsewhere and the whole thing takes on a life of its own, a wheel within a wheel. You’re an expert because some other channel said you were, so the next channel says the same thing.
NO STRIP SEARCHES, MORE TERRORISM?
Stopping electronic strip searches would not mean we have to tolerate terrorism. It means we’d have to put more effort into fighting it where it belongs, in the countries from which it is being launched and supported. We can also find many ways to make the processing of passengers safer without resorting to technological tricks at the cost of a few hundred more million dollars. Lets take all the money that would have gone buying more technology and invest it to make certain that reliable tips coming in to the CIA and elsewhere don’t get lost in the shuffle.
Doug Terry, 1.6.10
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