Since shortly after the dark day of 9/11, to get on an airplane in this country has been to be subjected to more elaborate security procedures. You often have to tote your own luggage around to screening devices and wait while it's inspected by people wearing blue gloves. You have to take off your shoes. You have to throw away your bottles of water and buy new ones once you're past the checkpoint. (I think the folks who have the H2O concessions at the airports suggested that one.) You have to discard things like lighters and medicines and nail clippers and that most lethal of all substances, breast milk. You also have to get there much earlier and wait in long lines to be treated with cold suspicion by officials, some of whom seem to know their jobs and some of whom just seem to enjoy the sensation of power and the joy of ordering others around.
I wouldn't mind any of this if I thought there was the slightest chance that it was lessening the chance of another 9/11. But flying the last few years has convinced me — and I'm hardly the only person who thinks this — that all the new stuff is just for show. The metal detectors can still, I suppose, prevent most folks from bringing weapons onto the planes…but it strikes me that everything that's been added to the ordeal is just so someone can pretend that since that September day, we're doing more to prevent disaster.
This morning on Fox News Sunday, Department of Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend was asked to defend the new decision that lighters on planes pose no threat. Here's a link to a video of her justifying that change. But the question I'd like to see asked is: "What's changed?" If a terrorist could have used a Zippo to bring down a plane last month, why can't he now? The unspoken logical conclusion is that lighters were never dangerous, which leads us to the obvious follow-up question: "How did you come to this conclusion and why didn't someone decide it 5+ years ago?" I find it hard to believe that the C.I.A. has just now monitored some terrorists, overheard them saying they never use lighters in their schemes, and deduced from that exchange that no terrorist could or would.
Make no mistake: I'm all for doing whatever can be done to make our skies safer, especially when I'm flying them. But it seems to me that every dollar and man-hour you spend doing something that doesn't work is a buck and a man-hour not spent on doing something that might. One useful project might be to take the 50% or so of the airport T.S.A. crew that acts like they got promoted that morning out of working behind the Sbarro's counter and teach them to actually look at the passengers and talk to them like human beings. And maybe if they didn't devote so much time to looking for nail files and bottles of Crystal Geyser water, they might notice something that could actually do some harm.