Caught Between Counter- Terrorism and Paranoia

The United States wants to implement more and more security measures for international flights. After paying for a plane ticket, air passengers must also accept a drastic invasion into their private lives if they plan to travel to “the land of freedom and democracy.”

Anyone who has recently traveled to or from America has had to put up with offensive and frustrating airport security requirements. The U.S. citizen, who has grown accustomed to the “Western” methods used by Texas sheriffs, may not find this exercise of power unusual.

For the European citizen, however, these methods are reminiscent of the numerous limitations on freedom and private lives, of which Europe has seen enough. On top of it all, there is the almost shamanic visa issuance system, which includes so many screenings that one may be tempted to think it was actually invented by the KGB and not by freedom-loving Americans.

The Walk of Shame Through the Airport

The flight security measures adopted by the U.S. administration seem to belong in a Hitchcock movie. As an unfortunate tourist, you must go through numerous screenings, personalized interviews, background checks conducted in your own country and full body scans. These procedures make a simple flight from Amsterdam to New York (and back) seem like a journey of initiation, a Sisyphean challenge, when in fact it is a mere passage from one shore of the Atlantic to the other.

Additionally, members of the security personnel create an atmosphere of constant tension by displaying their guns in a manner similar to that of hip hop artists showing off their “bling.” In the waiting room, you have to watch your step in order to avoid tripping over the police dogs that are sniffing all the nooks and crannies or accidentally run into the heavily armed military personnel.

A cheap cigarette lighter forgotten in your pocket sounds the alarm, and you are immediately surrounded by a group of law enforcement officers who are dying to get their hands on you. Cell phones do not work in airports, nor do they work on a 5-mile radius around them. If you accidentally try to access the Internet on your laptop, you might fry it. If your complexion is darker, you are under close supervision. The brandy in your bag is immediately labeled as liquid hexogen and poured into the first bulletproof container available.

If you fail to answer a set of puzzling questions quickly, and in English, a guy chewing gum and wearing sunglasses will invite you to step into another room, where you will be questioned and scrutinized one more time. Another stubborn employee will use a knitting needle to pick through the hand moisturizer you bought in Duty Free as a gift for your wife.

If you cannot resist the urge to scratch some intimate place on your body, you will have to endure a full body search for hidden objects or explosives.

If you are unfortunate enough to have suffered an accident and you have a metal rod inside your leg, you should not be surprised if a doctor shows up holding another scanner and tries to figure out whether that thing inside your body is indeed an implant or the barrel of a gun cleverly hidden under your muscles.

The airport is no longer a public place. It has become a chamber of horrors. It has become a prison adorned with posters about democracy, free movement and the right to privacy.

Counter-Terrorism, a New Form of Paranoia

The accidental European tourist, as he passes through the magnetic gates, holding his head down, his shoes and belt in one hand and his trousers in the other, trying not to slip on the greasy floor, feels robbed of all traces of human dignity.

He is further humiliated by the contemptuous attitude of the customs officer, who has barely managed to graduate from a small-town high school but feels superior because he is a citizen of the “greatest democratic nation in the world.”

The presumption of innocence no longer means a thing, and all the naïve individuals who are brave enough to travel to America are gathered together indiscriminately and screened, just in case they might pose a threat to the continent of democracy and personal freedom.

In fact, the whole screening system used for the people who want to travel to the U.S. reminds one of the humiliations and abuses that European immigrants had to endure on Ellis Island, at the beginning of the 20th century.

Flight security must indeed exist and be visible because it applies to all travelers. However, what the Americans and their European “allies” understand by security requirements at the moment has gone beyond all decency and turned into a sad and ridiculous theater act, a full-fledged national psychosis.

These manifestations of psychosis and paranoia affect, in reality, only law-abiding American and European citizens. Possible terrorists will always find other means and other places to carry out their plans.

The definition of terrorism does not mention detonating bombs for the sake of the noise they make or the image of mutilated bodies. Its final purpose is that of creating fear, terror, panic and psychosis. From this perspective, Osama bin Laden has reached his goal and can sleep soundly from now on. He has won the war against the U.S.; he has spread terror!