I got stuck in the storms yesterday and spent 11 hours in airportland. It got me thinking about the relationship between formalism/anti-formalism, the “war on terror,” and equality norms. Below is the snapshot of those thoughts in flight…
Are we ready for a rational conversation about airport security? Maybe it hasn’t been long enough. The World Trade Center has not been rebuilt; the “war on terror” goes on. The wounds are still fresh. But do we really suppose that this bizarre ritual of taking off our shoes, like penitents about to enter holy ground, divesting ourselves of all our worldly belongings, and ensuring that we are free from any bottled water — do we really think that this is a permanent, necessary, or even effective way to ensure air safety?
Israel, which has been battling “terror” for decades, provides a useful counterexample — though I think what is most interesting is how the Israeli method won’t work here, because of our commitments to equality, and our unspoken understanding that moving away from bright-line rules to a more “common sense” system would inevitably cause problems of bias. Once again, we Americans manage to have created for ourselves a counterintuitive, legalistic, bureaucratic system — just the kind of law we say we don’t like — because our highest norms demand nothing less.
Quick bag checks are ubiquitous in Israel: at bars, at movie theaters, and of course at any bus or train station. These checks do work; there are dozens of instances, in the last few years alone, where a would-be suicide bomber was caught by an average security guard. In many cases, the bomber detonates on the spot, killing himself and the guard, but, in being forced to do so early, failing to kill as many civilians.
Even at airports, however, there is rarely the kind of detailed inspection that is de rigeur for air travelers in America. Why not? Because most Israeli security systems now check people, not things. El Al, the Israeli national airline, is perhaps the most obvious example. El Al does x-ray and inspect every piece of luggage, but it also briefly interrogates every prospective passenger. There is an art to this process, or rather a science: finding the right question to, however momentarily, confuse and startle anyone. One time, for me, it was when I couldn’t remember my cousin’s name. A friend of mine, wearing a yarmulke, was asked what portion of the Torah was being read that week — and panicked when he couldn’t recall. And in that brief moment, the guard is watching for telltale signs of deceit.
Well, it seems to work — but would it work in America?
The obvious problem with such a system is that it inevitably involves some degree of racial profiling. A security guard will, unavoidably, be more suspicious of an Arab, or a Muslim, than of an “obvious” Christian or a Jew. Yes, we all get interrogated — but some interrogations are more intense than others, which is probably why all the Palestinians fly Continental instead.
Yet surely in America we’re at the other extreme — this ridiculous and, yes, ritualistic spectacle of a troop of girl scouts taking their shoes off because of one man, Richard Reid. Has one person ever had such an effect on so many?
Perhaps the long lines at security have now moved from grudgingly-accepted necessary evil to a rote motion that’s really ignored altogether, just like the pointless safety demonstrations at the start of every flight. Or perhaps it gives people a sense of confidence, that we can lick these terrorists once and for all. Maybe — but I don’t think so. I think we all know that this system can’t possibly work, and jumping through all the hoops (in our stocking feet) only serves to heighten our sense of homeland insecurity. Yes, we’re doing our best — but it’s obviously not going to be enough.
There is a bright side, which is that, knowing the alternatives, the security ritual is actually more about equality than security. Of course, racial profiling still goes on all the time. Often it’s not even the right “race” that’s profiled; I’ve had Sikh friends tell me that they get heightened scrutiny all the time, even though Sikhs are not Muslims, and in fact have been fighting a low-level war with Muslims in Kashmir for decades. But when the proverbial little old lady gets pulled out of line for a random security check, it’s like we’re all casting a vote against it. It’s as if we’re saying “Of course, we know this woman isn’t a terrorist. But we’re not willing to pay for convenience with prejudice.”
The Israeli mainstream has no such qualms. There, everyone knows what the enemy looks like, and only the Left really seems to care that hundreds of thousands of innocent Israeli Arabs and Palestinians get caught up in the dragnet. We have no choice, they say. It’s a war.
(Set aside the fact that, when suicide bombings were more common, the terrorists would disguise themselves as secular Israelis, ultra-Orthodox Jews, even punk kids. The majority of Jewish Israelis are from Arab countries, after all, and once the cultural markers are taken away, it’s really hard to tell Jew and Arab apart. One of the most disturbing moments in the film Paradise Now is when the familiar-looking Palestinian shaheed is transformed by a haircut, shave, and new suit into the perfect secular Israeli lawyer.)
Admittedly, when I’m stuck in the security line — I’m writing on a plane now, and due to stormy weather have spent seven hours traveling today, with at least two more to go — I don’t feel very patriotic. The process is more annoying than edifying, and to me still carries with it the reflexive, reactive whiff of panic. Okay, Okay–NO liquids! I also think it is possible to profile people using criteria other than skin color and religious identifications — and that it is necessary to do so, for practical as well as democratic reasons, since for every twenty Al Qaeda terrorists, there’s also a Timothy McVeigh who looks as All-American as anyone.
Even that, however, seems too close to a suspect classification. As someone who often travels alone, has dark Semitic features, and doesn’t shave every day, I’d probably get profiled myself. But the real problem is that ethnicity will inevitably play a role, even if we say it shouldn’t. I noticed just an hour ago, for example, that when a Sikh man in a burgundy turban got on the plane, I did a doubletake, and a brief jolt of nervousness flashed through my body. A Sikh — just like my friend.
Let alone the 99% of Arabs and Muslims who are 100% innocent.
Are we doomed, then, to waste time and money in order to maintain our at-least-official opposition to singling people out based on how they look or act? Well, maybe we are, unless we’re really willing to address root causes rather than run after the symptoms. And no one seems interested in doing that. It goes against all common sense not to bend the rules, even for the wheelchair-bound old man, even for the infant. But then, that’s the point of formalist rules — to defy common sense, which is often just another word for prejudice.
Posted by Jay Michaelson on November 17, 2006 at 11:01 AM
Comments
Yes, U.S. policy reflects a balance between security and equality interests. That’s pretty much true across the board in the area of counterterrorism measures.
Posted by: Yerper W. | Nov 17, 2006 1:17:56 PM