By now, everyone is familiar with the so-called Christmas Day Bomber, who attempted to set off an explosion on a Northwest Airlines flight that was landing in Detroit. And over the past several days, there have been countless talking heads and self-appointed experts appearing on tv and the radio purporting to have an obvious answer for making us all more safe: get more scanners. Among the talking-heads pushing this argument is former Homeland Security chief turned consultant Michael Chertoff. But Chertoff and his brethren are less concerned about safety and more concerned about personal profit. They have no interest in actually making Americans safer. They have no interest in fielding the tough questions. Instead, they implore us - all of us - to just pretend. Pretend it makes us safe.
Sadly, this simple mantra - pretend it makes us safe - represents the bedrock of so many failed American polices related to our safety and security.
The attempted Christmas Day bombing provides a perfect example this mantra, this mentality. As we now understand it, airports throughout the country will be installing some 300 new body scanners during 2010, with even more scanners likely in the future. We seem to accept this as a given, indeed, as a necessary step to keep us safe.
On yesterday's Diane Rehm show, one talking head suggested that Americans would accept these additional security measures, recognizing that such measures are necessary to keep us "one step ahead of the terrorists." The folly of that statement is undeniable: Scanning people's shoes after an incident involving a potential shoe bomb is not staying one step ahead.
Using certain body scanners to detect, say, plastic explosives hidden in someone's underwear is not staying one step ahead of the terrorists. Clearly, those measures amount to staying one step behind the terrorist. Clearly, those measures are taken after the fact; they are reactions to, not anticipations of. But this is logic. And logic has no place in making policy decisions related to Homeland Security.
Why more scanners? Because Michael Chertoff says so. Why does he say so? Because his clients manufacture the scanners. Because Mr. Chertoff stands to profit from the venture, not because it makes us safe. But Mr. Chertoff and wants us to ignore the facts, ignore the dots that are easily connected, and pretend that it will make us safe.
But there are others, beyond Chertof and his clients, who are supporting such measures for similarly flawed reasons. There are numerous self-proclaimed experts on security who are telling us that we need more scanners, more pat-downs. There are countless politicians who tow this line, not because it makes us safer, but because they feel pressured to do something, anything to create the illusion that they're keeping the wolves at bay. God forbid a politician look weak; helpless; or soft in the face of a War on Terror.
Unfortunately, we have seen this story play out before, in so many different arenas. Rather than dealing with the terribly complicated question of what would actually make us safe, so many politicians and policy-makers are obsessed with theatre and image. So many are overwhelmed with a need to do something, dammit!
We saw this in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when we launched our invasion of Afghanistan. Our strategy, inasmuch as we had one, was to declare a War on Terror, beat our chests, swagger like cowboys, and swear that it would make us safer. The folly of that strategy was revealed several years later, both by the unfortunate realities on the ground in Afghanistan, and a RAND study that reached definitively concluded that large scale wars on terror and military invasions were not the right way to fight terrorism. But in spite of that knowledge, a wide-range of stakeholders fell-back on the old mantra: just pretend it will make us safe.
Indeed, from the 1960's and 70's through the present day, we have watched this perverse philosophy play out in so many different arenas. War in Vietnam. Pretend it makes us safe. Nixonian law-and-order; build more prisons; get tough on crime; truth in sentencing; build more prisons. No need for an actual solution; just pretend it makes us safe. Full-throttle into a war in Afghanistan with no strategy. Pretend it makes us safe. An optional war in Iraq? Nevermind the evidence, just pretend it makes us safe. Maybe we'll invade Yemen.
More body scanners? Who cares about the actual efficacy of such measures, just pretend it makes us safe.
The irony here is that we had access to all the right information. We knew Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a threat; we knew of his intentions; all we had to do was connect the dots and coordinate our efforts. And now, instead of redoubling our efforts to gather more and better information; to improve communication between agencies; to coordinate our responses... we reach for something simpler, something tangible, something that will let people pretend that they are safe.
But at what cost.