Friday, July 01, 2011

"Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another?"

A nameless ninny at The Week chides us: "Quit picking on the TSA," claims random pat-downs and full-body searches protect us all from the scourge of blue-eyed jihadiots and concludes by chirping, "If any of these allegedly outrageous pat-downs had occurred on October 11, 2001, the general reaction would have been, 'What an awful shame that things have come to this, but you can't be too careful.'"

O rilly? Aw, let's break it down:

1. The odds of a random closer-look finding Bad Guys (not just Mr. Albert Qaeda and his singing incendiaries, but D. B. Cooper and the addled hippie who just wants to go to Cuba, too) are, well, random.

2. Honest to Murgatroyd, the writer tells us, "It is indisputable that the ranks of violent Islamist jihadists include people who definitely do not look the part.... While it may well be true that the entire population of, say, white-western-mom-violent-Islamist-jihadists would fit into a booth at McDonald's, it is also true that it doesn't take more than that to bring down an airplane." This implies A) all swarthy passengers ("looks the part") are being closely scrutinized, which is both manifestly untrue and would be greeted by cries of outrage (and forsooth, the world has both zillions of dark-complected, dark-haired people who aren't Muslims and Muslims who don't look like "Arabs"); and B) that plane-bombers are a statistically greater risk than hamfisted maintenance and pilot fatigue or wind shear, enough risk to randomly deep-search some but not all airline passengers. How d'ye suppose the feddies calibrate that?

3. Pining for the panicky, over-wrought days immediately after the filthy bastards adopted airplanes as mass-murder weapons is preposterous; flying was never safer than it was at that time, when the first passenger to even look like he was in a skyjacking mood would -- and on several occasions did -- find himself bottom man in an impromptu game of pile-up. The element of surprise was lost and passengers were not in a just-go-along mood. They still aren't.

Looky here, you anonymous, nanny-state-worshiping witling, if pat-downs and nudie-scanners are the answer, they otta be doin' 'em to everybody before they get on a plane -- ground crew, pilots, flight attendants, all passengers. --And if they do work so blamed well, how many would-be malefactors have they caught? Anyone? Oh, I'll tell you: none. Zero.

Security theatre: it's what they do instead of something; and the victims, some of them, cheer 'em on.

7 comments:

Tango Juliet said...

Or we could just adopt the El Al plan.

Seems to work for the Israelis.

BobG said...

If someone was stupid enough to pull a knife and try to take over these days, they'd get tackled and stomped to death by the other passengers. That scenario is not going to work again, so why do they keep trying to guard against it?

Bubblehead Les. said...

The last time I flew was 7 days AFTER 9/11. Trust me, one bad joke about a Bomb while standing in line at McLarren in Vegas got the idiot about a half a dozen passengers dragging the Fool over to the side and restraining him until the Cops showed up.

Nowadays? Well, I'm guessing I don't have to worry about 95 year old women in Wheel Chairs, don't I? And you can ask Breda about all the Crap she goes through when she has to Fly.

Old Grouch said...

...ground crew, pilots, flight attendants, members of congress, all passengers...

Little addition for you ;)

Robert Fowler said...

For those that think TSA makes you safe. Go to a airport with commercial traffic. Look across the runway. See that? The civil side? Guess who provides security there. No one. With very few exceptions you can go to the civil side of any airport and have free access. It's very easy to get access to commercial airliners from that point. Look at all of the delivery people that aren't screened. Including the people that deliver the meals to your flight. Terrorists are not going to go through a TSA security check point when they can walk less than 1/2 a mile and have all the access they want or need. All the TSA is, is a prelude of the police state that some politicians want us to have. Why do you think some push so hard for gun control. Because they know that they can have more power if the people can't fight back.
And now the TSA has branched out. They did over 8,000 "checks" of bus and train stations in the last year. Just more preparing the sheep. Some places even allow the police to "stop and frisk" people on the street looking for "illegal" guns. Until the people in this country stand up and say NO MORE we are going to have more and more of our rights infringed.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Members of Congress should definitely have all bodily cavities searched. Twice. Without anesthesia. By the big guy named Bubba.

Or just hang them first on general principle, and dispense with searching them at all.

Ken said...

If it's any consolation, all but about three commenters showed the author the hot end of the lasers. Of the exceptions, one was a TSA employee "who believes in the mission," one was a troll claiming by implication to be a subject of HRM the Queen, and one was the author's sock puppet, I think.