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Stripping away any sense of security

Ellis Henican

August 11, 2006

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They threaten, we think. They threaten again, we think harder. Always, our thinking chases their threats, then must elbow ahead of them.

For one day at least, we are breathing easier. Please don't ask me about tomorrow or the day after that.

That's the unmistakable lesson of modern terror fighting at the airport and in the skies -- a never-ending cat-and-mouse game between us and the people who mean us harm. Why should the back-and-forth stop now?

First came the X-ray machines in the terminal. And really, who could argue with that? X-ray machines were going to keep us safe.

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And they did.

For a while.

The wands came next, rubbed up and down our bodies like beeping Billy clubs. Better safe than sorry, right?

After Sept. 11, the tit-for-tat really got rolling. The government drew up those no-fly lists, which sounded great but were much too confusing. Federal screeners replaced the private square-badges, for all the good that did. Some random fliers were pulled out of line for extra special scrutiny. And after the crazy shoe-bomber got pinched on a Paris-to-Miami flight, a new take-your-shoes-off policy went into effect on the ground.

All of it seemed to make us safer.

For a while.

You know where this is heading, don't you?

We'll all be flying naked, sitting in the plane on metal stools.

And even then, some evil zealot will be cooking up some new way to smuggle something aboard.

"We have to be smarter than the terrorists are, over and over again," as airline-security consultant Charles Slepian put it Thursday.

And he certainly had a point.

The bad guys aren't getting dumber. You can count on that. Their every advance has to be matched -- no, surpassed -- by ours. And that means getting busy -- and staying there.

So now the security people will be taking away the hair mousse.

And the contact-lens solution.

And the $4 bottles of water they sell at the airport newsstand. All those items, as of Thursday, are being consigned to the belly of the plane, the same place the nail clippers and the mini-pocketknives were the last time we got this scared.

All of it is on account of the terror arrests in Britain. A couple of dozen men, Muslim zealots, most of Pakistani descent, are accused of hatching a plot to blow up nine airliners as they flew from England to America.

The thought is truly frightening. The pattern is predictable as can be.

They picked a technique we hadn't been focusing on, as we rid the skies of penknives, Zippo lighters and nail files.

Like the kid in the back of the room of sophomore chemistry, they remembered those potions could actually pack a wallop.

Now every time we fly, the rest of us have to start worrying about exploding witches' brews.

This is just the psychology of modern fear. We are never safe forever. We are only, if we are lucky and skillful, safe for now.

Pauline Frommer, the travel expert and daughter of the man who wrote all those famous guide books, said she was flying out to Chicago this morning. She said she'd be getting to the airport early. But other than that, she wasn't worried at all.

"We have to travel," she said. "We're Americans. We can't let the terrorists keep us at home."

And I liked the way that sounded, as new details of the terror arrests trickled in from London. Then I remembered those naked flights.

It's not the terrorists that worry me, as this mob sits safely in jail. It's my all-American vanity.

If I don't get to the gym in a hurry, no way I'm getting on another plane.