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Doing Something


November 13, 2001

In order to combat terrorism, our government is cracking down on the usual suspects: us. As I was reminded last week, we are all suspected terrorists now, subject to insulting and invasive searches at airports.

At Dulles Airport I somehow set off an alarm, even after removing every key, pen, coin, and paper clip from my pockets. I had to stand with my legs spread and arms extended while a gent with a turban and a bushy beard checked hitherto private sections of my person with a metal detector. He was quite polite, but I couldn’t help reflecting to myself that he looked a bit more, well, exotic than I did. If such indignities become a routine part of air travel, pretty soon only nudists will be flying.

On my return trip I set off another alarm at O’Hare in Chicago. Once again a spread-eagle search failed to detect any deadly weapons, but this time the contents of my pockets moved the authorities to spring into action. A young official announced to me that he was confiscating two of the three cigarette lighters I was carrying. It seems there is a new Federal rule that you may carry only one lighter aboard an airplane.

I decided not to bring O’Hare to a halt by demanding an explanation of this novel rule. But I tried in vain to think of a reason. It seemed to me, and still does, that if you can hijack a plane with a cigarette lighter, one would be enough, and there would be no great advantage in having a second or third lighter. I can’t really explain why I happened to have so many lighters on me — my pockets are always full of unsorted stuff — but I’ve never lit two of them at the same time, and I don’t know how I’d go about lighting three of them at once. But maybe these cunning hijackers have some tricks I haven’t heard of.

[Breaker quote: Reflections of a 
suspected terroristAnyway, the Federal Government seized two of my cigarette lighters without even offering compensation. I’d broken a rule I’d never heard of and can’t understand, and I paid the price. This is how we live now. Do you feel safer?

I suppose the real purpose of these measures is to make us feel that the government is “doing something” about terrorism, even if what it does has no discernible relation to addressing the problem. The pettier the precaution, the greater the vigilance.

Is this also the purpose of the war on Afghanistan — to convince us that the government is “doing something”? We are assured that the war is going well, that raining bombs on a godforsaken country is somehow having an impact on terrorism — though the terrorists we have to worry about are already living here, know what to do, and presumably don’t need to be activated by orders from a cave in Asia.

Who cares? When it’s feelings that count, dropping bombs is an emotional release. Whether they achieve their stated goal is secondary. Some people who feel very strongly want to use nuclear weapons. That would really be “doing something.”

Ordinary Americans feel that they are “doing something” by waving flags signifying their support for the government, or “the country.” Some people seem to think they prove their own patriotism by impugning that of others; radio talk-show hosts display their patriotism by accusing the news media of lacking it, as if Peter Jennings were rooting for Osama bin Laden.

What it really comes to is that nobody knows what to do. We are faced not with a war in the usual sense, but with an extremely nasty sort of vandalism. It can’t conquer us, but maybe, because of its diffuse nature, we can’t conquer it either. We aren’t dealing with Hirohito, let alone Robert E. Lee. There will be no conclusive Appomattox moment when the enemy surrenders his sword and we know it’s finally over. It can go on until the last fanatic decides to devote his remaining years to collecting stamps.

And in the meantime, the government will keep cracking down on the usual suspects.

We all want desperately to return to the world we thought we were living in on September 10. But this desire may be a utopian yearning. That world no longer exists and may never exist again.

Joseph Sobran

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