Independent Women's Forum - Research Areas > Homeland Security/Civil Defense

Fourth of July Reflections

info@iwf.org (Charlotte Hays) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Charlotte's Web

As the Fourth of July approaches, we might stop and reflect that we have not experienced an attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001. This is either because: (A.) The terrorists have gotten together and decided, What the heck? We sorta like the Great Satan, or (B.) Somebody somewhere is doing something right to protect us.

Who could that be? Liberals certainly don't want to credit any of the tactics of the Bush administration with keeping us safe. They are too busy mocking the administration as stupid and/or Hitlerian. It is telling that the first installment of the Washington Post's four-part series on Vice President Dick Cheney bears this headline: "The Unseen Path to Cruelty." It deals with handling of detainees.

One of the cornerstones in Cheney's program for handling terrorist suspects is that they do not "deserve to be treated as prisoners of war." Cheney had argued that The Geneva Conventions, which since 1949 have regulated treatment of civilians and combatants in a war zone, do not apply to al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters captured on the battlefield. It is my humble recollection that neither of these terrorists groups signed the convention.

We should not extend the assurances of The Geneva Conventions to those who in no way honor civilized rules of combat. Being a decent society, we intuitively want to do so. "Robust questioning," for which, according to the Post, Cheney argued, may include things we'd rather not know about (I'd be more interested in establishing rules, though not necessarily making them public, that restricted more severe forms of barbarity than prohibiting, say, water boarding). But given a choice between your child and a terrorist's civil rights (which probably wouldn't be honored in his own country!), even a liberal might end up being nasty.

Does our society take a risk engaging in such forms of interrogation? Yes. But given a possible alternative, ceasing to exist as a society, we should be glad that some men and women are prepared to make these hard choices. Almost despite itself, the Post series portrays Cheney in such a heroic mold: When Cheney and others watched the attack on the twin towers on television, "The people who were present, not all of them admirers, said they saw no sign then or later of the profound psychological transformation that has often been imputed to Cheney. What they saw, they said, was extraordinary self-containment and a rapid shift of focus to the machinery of power. While others assessed casualties and the work of 'first responders,' Cheney began planning for a conflict that would call upon lawyers as often as soldiers and spies."

As for the alleged "cruelty," I agree with columnist Mona Charen, who wrote this on National Review's blog: "If Cheney took the position that the executive has broad constitutional authority in this area, as the article suggests, it was not because he is a cruel man, but out of genuine conviction that this was the best way to protect the American people."

One of the arguments in the piece is that policies of cruelty developed in Washington spread to Abu Ghraib, creating one of the worst scandals in recent U.S. history. But Abu Ghraib did not involve high-ranking officials, charged with conducting clandestine interrogations running amok. It was not a stench that somehow spread. It was lower ranking men and women who became involved in pornographic behavior.

It is possible to take a civil libertarian position that criticizes the administration. But it's the mockery of the men and women who have most likely prevented another attack on America that is so infuriating. There have always been such people. In Victorian England, Rudyard Kipling had their number:

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap.

This, of course, was before the left developed the ingenious formulation of supporting the uniform but not the country for which it stood. Still, mockery of those who like Cheney have to make decisions most of us would rather not make persists. It's, as Kipling said, cheap. The real root, though, of much of the mockery is that so many of us don't value the United States. Yes, I know that liberals will say they value it so much they don't want it besmirched by the likes of Bush and Cheney. But I think that is a subterfuge. They aren't sure that America is worth the terrible cost our survival is extracting. You can't die for a country if you don't believe in it.

Mockery is cheap; survival is not. As we celebrate the Fourth, let's remember how many died for this country and honor them.

Charlotte Hays is the senior editor at the Independent Women's Forum.

"Terrorists are jokes until the bomb goes off."

info@iwf.org (Charlotte Hays) — Sun, 13 May 2007 15:00:00 EDT

The media portrays terrorists captured before the act as bumbling small fry. Does that make them innocuous? Mark Steyn's answer:

Most terrorists seem like bumbling losers if they're caught before the act: That's certainly true of the Fort Dix jihadists who took their terrorist training DVD to the local audio store to be copied. It was also true of the Islamists arrested in Toronto last year for plotting to behead the prime minister, one of whose cell members had a bride who wanted him to sign a prenup committing him to jihad. The Heathrow plotters arrested while planning to blow up U.S.-bound airliners included a Muslim convert who'd started out as the son of a British Conservative Party official with a P. G. Wodehouse double-barreled name and a sister who was a Victoria's Secret model and ex-wife of tennis champ Yanick Noah.

"But then Mohammed Atta and the 9/11 gang would have seemed pretty funny if you'd run into them in that lap-dance club they went to before the big day where the girls remembered them only as very small tippers. Most terrorists are jokes until the bomb goes off."

Steyn has sobering thoughts for the Fortress America crowd (you know, the isolationists who want to hunker down in the U.S. and forget the enemy abroad):

"The [Fort Dix terrorists] were (if you'll forgive the expression) illegal immigrants. They're not meant to be here. Yet they graduated from a New Jersey high school and they operated two roofing companies and a pizzeria. Think of how often you have to produce your driver's license or Social Security number. But, five years after 9/11, this is still one of the easiest countries in the world in which to establish a functioning but fraudulent identity.

"Consider, for example, the post-9/11 ritual of airline security. You have to produce government-issued picture ID to the TSA official. Does that make you feel safer? On that Tuesday morning in September, four of the killers got on board by using picture ID they'd acquired through the 'undocumented worker' network in Falls Church, Va. Half the jurisdictions in the United States issue picture ID to people who shouldn't even be in the country, and they issue it as a matter of policy. The Fort Dix boys were pulled over for 19 traffic violations, but because they were in 'sanctuary cities,' any cop who suspected they were illegals was unable to report them to immigration authorities. Again, as a matter of policy.
"On one hand, America creates a vast federal security bureaucracy to prevent another 9/11. On the other hand, American politicians and bureaucrats create a parallel system of education and welfare and health care entitlements, main- taining and expanding a vast network of fraudulent identity that cor- rupts the integrity of almost all state databases. And though it played a part in the killing of 3,000 Americans, leaders of both parties insist nothing can be done to stop it. All we can do is give the Duka brothers 'a fast track to citizenship.'"

The Flying Imams

info@iwf.org (Charlotte Hays) — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 11:11:00 EDT

The Democrats can profess their support of the troops (whom they seem to regard mostly as another victim group) all they want. But with every passing day in power they show how essentially frivolous they are when it comes to national security. Debra Burlingame desribes the latest manifestation of this:

"Various members of the House majority had just spent 30 minutes in self-praise over the $7.3 billion transportation-security bill, calling it long-overdue relief for millions of Americans. Then Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.) rose to propose an amendment directed at a dangerous new threat to national security.

"His motion was a response to the 'John Doe' lawsuit filed by six 'Flying Imams.' Last November, the six were ejected from a US Airways flight after their fellow passengers reported what they saw as strange and disturbing behavior. The imams claim that they were victims of 'intentional' and 'malicious' discrimination and are seeking compensation, including punitive damages - from the airlines, and also from the passengers and crew, who are identified in the suit as 'John Does' to be served with legal papers once a court order reveals their actual identities.

"That lawsuit is a dangerous threat aimed at a vital component of public-transit security - the public itself. Every one of those 121 votes aimed at defeating protection for 'John Does' was a Democrat - indeed, more than half of all Democrats present voted 'nay.'

"And, with the exception of Rep. Anthony Weiner (Brooklyn), Democrats from the New York-New Jersey metro area led the way in voting against it.

"Rep. Jerrold Nadler, whose district includes Ground Zero, voted no. So did Rep. Carolyn Maloney, whose district includes Midtown, and Rep. Nita Lowey, who lost dozens of Westchester neighbors on 9/11."

Some of us with suspicious minds think the flying imams are trying to set up a situation in which citizens fail to report possibly threatening behavior.

Air Sing Sing

info@iwf.org (Charlotte Allen) — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 12:48:00 EST

Nine times out of ten I agree with the wonderful winger-blogger Captain Ed Morissey. But here's an issue on which I must respectfully but vehemently dissent: the Transportation Safety Administration's announcement of a pilot project using "backscatter" X-ray machines at airports that reveal the naked bodies of passengers to officers. The American Civil Liberties Union objects that the machines violate passengers' privacy and turn the better-looking among them into involuntary porn stars -- and you know? For once, I agree with the ACLU.

Captain Ed doesn't:

"The images might have titillation value to anyone who for some reason can't access the Victoria's Secret catalog, but that's about it. They aren't recognizable as individuals, and the only image one can see is a ghostly outline that can be recognized as a male or female, but that's about all the definition of soft tissue that one can get....The notion that these will become the prurient hit of the Internet in an age of Britney Spears crotch-flashing and the wide variety of much more well-defined porn is simply hilarious.

"People complain that the government has not asked us to sacrifice much for the war effort, and so have not built wartime morale in the populace. Maybe that's because when the government does ask us to support common-sense solutions to provide more complete security, we start obsessing about becoming unwilling porn stars. Let's not wait until the next disaster to adopt the security processes that could save lives for a minimal amount of effort on our part as individuals."

Yes, Ed, I'm also mighty suspicious when the "you've-got-a-First-Amendment-right-to-let-it all-hang-out" ACLU suddenly turns into a defender of old-fashioned modesty. But the fact remains that the machines do violate passengers' privacy and worse still, their dignity.

The TSA defends the machines on the ground that they are already in use at "prisons." Yes, they are, and so are body-cavity searches of naked inmates -- which are a fabulously effective way to detect contraband and hidden weapons. Why doesn't the TSA institute those in the name of airport security? Make Grandma and little Junior take all their clothes off and bend over? Are prisons supposed to set the standards for treating innocent people -- children, vacationers, traveling business-people -- who have never committed a crime in their lives? It's already humiliating enough to have to remove shoes, belts, and other items of clothing before being allowed on a plane, or having your Starbucks coffee and your jar of lip-gloss confiscated. Until someone called a halt to the practice, TSA officers were freely feeling around the brassieres of female passengers, all in the name of the "sacrifices" these passengers were supposed to make in the name of "wartime morale."

And, by the way, I thought we were supposed to disapprove of -- or at least laugh at -- Britney Spears's unseemly bodily displays, not adopt them as social norms.

The problem with the TSA's latest move is that it's not a "common-sense solution" to the problem of air terrorism. The common-sense solution is to focus screening efforts thoroughly and efficiently on the ethnic and religious groups that commit 99.9 percent of air terrorism. But we can't have that. Look what happened when U.S. Airways used common sense and dumped from a plane a bunch of imams who were switching seats, asking for metal seatbelt extensions, and tallking loudly about Al Qaeda. So instead of getting to use common sense about ferreting out potential mass-murderers, we want to turn every airport into Sing Sing on strip-search night.

So sign me up for the ACLU. No, don't. The ACLU doesn't believe in terrorist profiling, either. The ACLU would rather have the planes blown up.

To Veil Or Not To Veil

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 12:18:00 EST

The Muslim woman's higab (headscarf) and nikab (usually black, face-covering veil with a slit that leaves only the eyes uncovered) are much in the news these days.

Some view these garments as a forthright expression of religious commitment. A number of Egyptian actresses, for example, as reported in The Wall Street Journal, say they have taken to wearing the higab in their television performances through devotion to God and Islam. One actress, known simply as Sabreen, explains, "I felt like I have to please God. He has given me so much...."

Others, especially in the West, interpret donning the veil as a repudiation of a secular public life. For instance, Jack Straw, a former British foreign secretary, stated that the nikab hinders good relations between Muslims and non-Muslims because it is "such a visible statement of separation and difference." Many of his fellow citizens appear to agree: according to Paul Cruickshank, writing in The New York Times, only 22 percent of British voters believe that Muslims have done enough to assimilate into mainstream society.

The political interpretations of veiling vary widely. Cruickshank holds that young women who increasingly adopt the nikab are engaging in an act of "political symbolism" - rebelling, acting out their "sense of besiegement" and "alienation" in face of (in Britain) unemployment, stereotyping and foreign policy. Victor Davis Hanson takes an entirely different tack, finding it unsurprising that women veil but also a matter of deepest concern that liberal Westerners, out of political correctness, shrink from requiring women to unveil when necessary. Real Clear Politics carried Hanson's comments:

The astonishing fact is not just that millions of women worldwide in 2006 are still veiled from head-to-toe, trapped in arranged marriages, subject to polygamy, honor killings and forced circumcision, or are without the right to vote or appear alone in public. What is more baffling is that in the West, liberal Europeans are often wary of protecting female citizens from the excesses of Sharia law - sometimes even fearful of asking women to unveil their faces for purposes of simple identification and official conversation.

This controversy has ignited a debate, notably at National Review Online, over whether the nikab should or can be banned in the West. The exchange of views goes to the heart of tensions between security concerns and fundamental freedoms. I cite copiously the NRO, as the matter is crucial and fascinating:

· William J. Bennett: "Europe is going the wrong way in...banning...the...nikab...I am inalterably opposed to them being forced to wear religious clothing they do not choose to wear of their free choice. But our view of religious liberty in this country, should be the guide...I must [not] deny fellow citizens the right to worship their god in their fashion so long as such worship is peaceable...To go after women donning their veils is to attack the problem at its weakest - and frankly, least important - link...While Muslim women are being beaten, while honor killings are extant, and while mosques, universities, and madrassahs are fomenting actual terrorism, Muslim women assuming a dress code is not where our - or our allies' - focus should be. Go after the men who do these things - that's where the fight is."

· Mona Charen: "The controversy over the veil is one of the first flickers of European awareness after decades of somnolence...native Europeans are failing to reproduce in anything like the numbers necessary to sustain their societies...the Muslims...have become a mortal threat...two reasons: ...in a few years, they will become a majority...and...European Muslims are among the most radical and Islamist in the world...The battle over the veil embodies all of this. These tentative first steps toward cultural self-assertion by the Europeans follow decades of degrading ‘multiculturalism'...The question...is this: Can a post-Christian Europe summon the will to preserve itself when the animating principles of its civilization are a watery mix of pacifism, socialism, and sexual license?"

· Phyllis Chesler: "[W]hen Muslim women in Western countries wear the veil it...is a...very aggressive statement about refusing to assimilate into a Jewish-Christian and modern democracy...Also, a professional who is fully veiled (a teacher, physician, lawyer, driving instructor), cannot really do her job. In addition, veiling oneself may also be a way of rebelling in a romantic and nihilistic fashion against a grandparental pro-assimilation generation who worked long hours for small wages in countries now perceived as "colonialist" and "racist." For such young women, often encouraged by their male counterparts, they are literally "taking the veil" for Islam, Allah, and the caliphate. It is a way of rejecting sexual promiscuity, sexual availability in the West and paradoxically, embracing Islamic gender apartheid...If we allow our Western views about tolerance to force us to tolerate the intolerant; if we allow human-rights violations to flourish as expressions of religious liberty - then we are lost. Thus, I would ban veiling in the workplace, at school, and in public venues but at this time take no position about it at home or in the mosque in the West."

· Andrew McCarthy: "For legitimate public purposes - e.g., ...inspection at a security checkpoint, etc. - the nikab would frustrate the public purpose...My own view is that wearing the nikab in this country at this time is an expression of affinity with the enemy - an enemy whose goal is a fundamentalist Islamic society that would deny us the freedom and equality we cherish ... including the freedom to dress as we choose and the equality of women with men...We, after all, have a right to express ourselves freely, too, and that must mean freedom to shun forms of morale-boosting for those who would destroy us...The jihadists don't wear a uniform. In discerning who they are, all we have to go on are forms of expression which signal support for their cause...The nikab, to me, is such an expression. Countenancing [the nikab], moreover, puts enormous pressure on Muslim women to conform - or face what can be the deadly consequences of not doing so...[T]he tolerance of a society is necessarily measured by how much intolerance it is willing to abide. The law will not let us ban the nikab outright, but we should be free to discourage it severely."

· Emanuele Ottolenghi: "The veil should not be banned as a matter of individual choice. But it cannot be treated as an expression of religious freedom...Not only is the veil not mandated in the Koran, but it is clearly an instrument of submission for women. It decrees the inferiority of women and their subordination to men. It is the expression of a worldview that we reject as contrary to Western values. It does not mean that women who freely choose to wear it and live by the rule of the veil should be punished. It means that a) those communities that embrace it...cannot but be left at the periphery of Western society, due to their rejection of our fundamental belief in the equality of the sexes and b) that Western society is entitled to fight a democratic battle of ideas against the veil and the logic that hides behind it, in order to ensure that women who wear it choose to do so rather than being forced to wear it by a strict system of social control, personal intimidation and moral intrusion."

· Daniel Pipes: "The nikab, which leaves only a woman's eyes showing, is the second most extreme Muslim covering of women after the burka (which covers the entire head, including the eyes)...I see the nikab or burka doing immense damage to male/female and Muslim/non-Muslim relations, but in those areas an American's right to freedom-of-expression prevails. On grounds of security, however, I believe that both coverings should be banned, as one cannot have face-less persons walking the streets, driving cars, or otherwise entering public spaces."

Andrew McCarthy sums up the solution admirably: Relentlessly unveil the veiling. In the interest of preserving our freedoms, we should not ban the nikab outright - although we can ban it situationally, when our security is at stake - but we should be free to speak out mightily against it.

Is Profiling a Populist Issue?

info@iwf.org (Charlotte Hays) — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 08:52:00 EDT

A recent article in Daily Mail reports:

"British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny - refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed."

Writing on Tech Central Station, Arnold Kling calls this the "sane revolution" it is the coming populist revolt:

Regarding the 'mutiny' of the British airplane passengers, no doubt the elites are thinking, 'Oh, what awful behavior on the part of passengers. They are ruining our effort to reassure Muslims that they face no discrimination.'
Meanwhile, the people are thinking, 'Look, the fact that you subject all passengers to the same humiliating searching and restrictions says that you have no idea who is dangerous and who is not. If you are that incompetent, then don’t expect us to trust you when you tell us that a plane is safe.'
The elites focused on hair gels and other liquids that were supposed tools of the plot. Everyone else noticed the ethnicity of the plotters.

Obviously, we do not want to alienate Muslims who are with us in the war against Islamo-fascists, but profiling is a lot more than just noticing somebody's ethnicity. The last bombing foiled by El Al was an Irish woman in talking to her the profilers discovered she had a Palestinian fiancé he had planted a bomb in her luggage.

Profiling isn't the only terrorism-related issue on which the elites differ from the rest of us--Kling notes another recent case in which elite theory runs up against populist reality:

One illustration of how elite theory can conflict with popular perceptions is the cover story on the September issue of The Atlantic, by James Fallows. The thesis of the article, which was written before the Lebanon war and the failure of the plot to blow up British airliners, is that the war on terror is over, and that we won. Despite the occasional plot or successful attack, we should declare victory, tone down the war rhetoric, and go about dealing with the world’s trouble spots using conventional diplomacy. In a follow-up, Fallows argues that the break-up of the plot to blow up airliners shows that 'it was police work, surveillance, and patient cultivation of sources that broke the airline bombing ring -- not speeches about a state of war.'
A populist definition of victory would mean that governments that fund terror groups or use them as instruments of their foreign policy are brought down. A populist definition of victory might mean that Muslim clerics who urge young men to join the jihad are given the opportunity to experience the ecstasy of martyrdom themselves.

Well-intentioned enemies....

info@iwf.org (Charlotte Hays) — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 16:15:00 EDT

Our Islamo-fascists enemies are fairly easy to identify (and isn't it appropriate that we've started using that term?). But society has other enemies:

Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Professor Samuel Huntington’s) transnationalism.
At the center of their thinking is a notion of moral relativism. No idea is morally superior to another. Hitler had his way, we have ours -- who’s to say who is right? No ideas should be "privileged," especially those that have been the guiding forces in the development and improvement of Western civilization. Rich white men have imposed their ideas because of their wealth and through the use of force. Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong. Our covert enemies go quickly from the notion that all societies are morally equal to the notion that all societies are morally equal except ours, which is worse.

Snakes on a U.K. Plane

info@iwf.org (Charlotte Allen) — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 10:37:00 EDT

You thought that Brit air officials were overreacting when they announced that mothers would have to taste the contents of their babies' bottles in front of security agents before being allowed to board with the bottles? Think again, as you read this story in the U.K. Telegraph about the ongoing investigation of the bombing plot uncovered last week (hat tip: Little Green Footballs):

"Scotland Yard police are quizzing Abdula Ahmed Ali, 25, and his 23-year-old wife Cossor over suspicions they were to use their baby's bottle to hide a liquid bomb.

"The theory is one of the reasons security chiefs are now insisting mothers taste babies' milk at check-in desks before allowing them to take bottles aboard flights.

"The pair are among up to 23 suspects being questioned over a plot to bring down nine airliners over five US cities, killing thousands of people in the air and on the ground.

"The questioning of the group comes as British Government sources yesterday revealed many of those suspects posed as relief workers to travel to al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan....

"Cossor's grandfather, Nazir Ahmed, 84, said Abdula had travelled to Pakistan about four weeks ago.

"We didn't understand what the hurry was and why he needed to go," Mr Ahmed said.

Using your baby as a human bomb--how low can you go? Comments LGF's Charles Johnson: "It's bad enough that they murder other people's children, but the anti-life ideology of radical Islam even leads followers to the ultimate depravity."

What will it take?

info@iwf.org (Charlotte Hays) — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 08:07:00 EDT

The American left is still in the Neville Chamberlain phase, you know, appeasement. As columnist Michael Barone points out, even Chamberlain was jolted out of this stance by events:

Chamberlain proceeded to build up Britain’s military forces and to embark on a vigorous diplomacy to cabin Hitler in. He realized instantly that he had been, as Winston Churchill was to say in his funeral oration in the House of Commons, 'deceived by a wicked man.' He prepared to call Churchill, his bitter critic on Munich, into government. Chamberlain’s diplomacy ultimately failed: Hitler wanted war too much. But Chamberlain stayed true to his countrymen, yielding his place to Churchill and strenuously supporting him when Britain was in peril.
Can we expect as much of our Left?

I heard some traveler last week say she was glad that the Brits foiled the terror plot then she slurred Homeland Security and Michael Chertoff. Ironically, the Brits, with whom we share a legal heritage, have some tools that the American left rejects.

Confiscating Grandma's Toothpaste

info@iwf.org (Charlotte Allen) — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 12:43:00 EDT

Here are the latest rules for air passengers from the Department of Homeland Security:

No liquids or gels are permitted to enter the sterile area through the screening checkpoint or be in accessible property or on one's person except:

Baby formula, breast milk, or juice if a baby or small child is traveling
Prescription medicine with a name that matches the passenger's ticket
Insulin and essential other non-prescription medicines

Examples of liquids and gels included in these security measures include:

Beverages
Shampoo
Suntan
Lotion
Creams
Toothpaste
Hair Gel
Other items of similar consistency

Also, you will not be allowed to bring any liquids or gels purchased after passing through the security checkpoint onboard the aircraft.

Um, I've got an alternative idea for a liquid that should not be permitted into the passenger cabin of a U.S. aircraft: The brain matter of anyone hailing from or tracing ancestry to a country that sponsors terrorists or terrorism. We can start with Pakistan, homeland of the "British citizens" involved in today's nastiness. Wouldn't that be peferable to snagging Grandma's toothpaste? She�s already gotta walk barefoot through the security gates and possibly have her brassiere frisked as well.

Airport security's dirty little secret: It doesn't make us safer...

info@iwf.org (Charlotte Hays) — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:35:00 EDT

One of the persistent thoughts I indulge as I while away time standing in line at airports: None of this makes us a durn bit safer.

It's all for show--taking nail scissors from granny, refusing to allow toddlers with names similar to terrorist on planes, and making me take off my sandals--none of it makes a difference.

In fact, I've always wondered what the security folks might do if they did spot a genuinely suspicious person. Ignore him for fear of being accused of profiling?

Iconoclastic New York Times columnist John Tierney--he's one of two--writes about the inherent faults in the way we handle airport security today:

Under its new leader, Kip Hawley, the T.S.A. is finally considering proposals to speed up the screening process by ignoring scissors, small knives and other items now on its verboten list. That would be a favor to airplane passengers, but it would take a lot more to undo one of the costliest mistakes Congress made after Sept. 11: the creation of the T.S.A.
Congress ignored the lessons from Israel and European countries, which have learned the hard way not to rely on government workers to screen airline passengers. The overseas airports switched to private companies and let the national government concentrate on being a watchdog - a job it could do much better when it wasn't overseeing its own workers.
But Congress insisted on creating a new federal airport security agency in charge of everything: making the rules, enforcing them and running the system. It was supposed to be a new kind of streamlined agency, exempt from some federal work rules. But a former T.S.A. official told me he was amazed at how quickly it had turned into a Soviet-style bureaucracy.
’It became this centralized risk-averse organization trying to create a cookie-cutter model for all the airports in America,' he said. He praised the T.S.A. screeners, but added: ’The billions being spent aren't buying more security because they're looking at things rather than at people. Rather than treating every airline passenger as a potential terrorist, you should husband your resources and concentrate on the higher-risk passengers.’
If it didn't spend so much time and money examining business travelers' laptops, the T.S.A. could focus on real threats, like bombs in baggage, but it's been slow to set up a registration system allowing frequent travelers to bypass the screening. So they wait in line with everyone else because the T.S.A. doesn't give airports the flexibility to add screeners quickly at busy times.