Airport Sercurity

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

With the current bruhaha about airport security, I am reminded that the whole ball of wax began with an act of terrorism, which became the focus of a nation filled with hatred and fear. Ten years later, the fear remains, a fear so great that a proud, free people will bend and submit to a degrading scheme of personal violation, loss of privacy of their effects, and disposal of the rights of due process of law that the fore-fathers of that people had fought and died to obtain and maintain for the people over the last two hundred and thirty years.

Groups or individuals engage in terrorism to change the behavior of a larger group or institution. By using terror, a smaller, less well armed contingent can effect this change in an efficient, less expensive manner than can be done with a larger, more heavily armed force. The terrorist uses fear as his weapon; actual casualties are minimal. The promise of future *possible* casualties is the real weapon. There may never be another one, there may be a few. The nature of the terrorists environment, there can never be a large number of casualties; the terrorists just don't have the resources.

The casualty count in this, the Forever War, is minuscule compared to any major war we have fought in our history, yet our politicians still bang the drum, beating the people into a religious froth to ensure the terrorists' weapon is still sharp: Fear. Instead of letting our laws and our law enforcement handle a problem of criminal conduct, our leaders have made it one of military conflict where our military is ill suited to do battle. How do you combat the real enemy, Fear, with tanks and guns?

Instead we lay upon the altar of sacrifice our Liberties. Never before have I had to carry proof within my own country of the place of my birth. Never before have I had to allow another person, unknown to me, to rummage through my personal belongings, and to touch me when I did not want to be touched. And worse, I have no choice but to submit to this; I don't even have the option to turn around and leave, I have to submit or be detained without a warrant or due process. I have to submit to this, or stop traveling in my own country, not just overseas, but in my own community.

I hope this nightmare is temporary, and that in the years to come, historians will look back on these times as one of those dangerous periods when Americans almost let their freedoms go, but then, somehow, managed to get them back again. But my own Fear is that this time, they have gone for good. When I watch the officials at work, I see for the first time in my life the workings of an Internal Police, answerable to no one but the Secretary of their order. I do not see how Liberty can stand.

Crow.