Why the TSA Gets to Grope Us

It's the foreign policy, stupid!

by Justin Raimondo, November 19, 2010

"The Transportation Safety Administration is bringing the war home – and the American people don’t like it one bit. Stories of TSA outrages are everywhere, from the "Don’t touch my junk" guy to that photo of a nun in full robes being searched by a TSA thuglet. Talk radio is up in arms, Judge Napolitano is having a conniption, and both liberals and conservatives seem to be uniting around a general consensus that this level of intrusiveness cannot be allowed to stand. Yet what is to be done?....

When the Soviet empire teetered and fell, we took credit for it instead of heeding the lesson of imperial exhaustion, and this escalated our hubris beyond anything yet seen. More "American exceptionalism." No, there is no security at the top of the world. Furthermore, at these dizzying heights, it is hard to see anything at all, beyond our own mythology of Manifest Destiny and other self-regarding hallucinations. Our vision obscured by conceit, and our other senses deadened by complacency and impending decadence, we are blind to the very real danger that comes at us with the persistence of Nemesis.....

Last [Wednesday] night, I heard Keith Olbermann interview Isaac Yeffet, former head of security for El Al, the Israeli state-owned airline, who scoffed at the TSA, his voice dripping with disdain as he described the porno-scanners and the body searches as worse than useless. Scanners? No, Yeffet has a better idea.....

In that world, as Yeffet explains: "First of all, we have to understand that people are waiting in line to go to the ticket counter. While they are waiting in line, this is opportunity for us as security people to go in to interview every passenger.

Every American a Palestinian.

"We must hire qualified people. We must train them well. And we need to teach them how to approach with the passengers, to let them understand we are not coming to investigate you; we are not coming to insult you; we are coming to help you to fly safe and secure, to go where you go to your destination." We’re the government, and we’re here to "help" you. Oh, the future is as bright as Olbermann is dim:

"Passenger profiling. You helped to develop it for El Al. What does it mean? Why does it work? And for people who jump when they hear the word, uh-oh, profiling, who are you profiling? It‘s not members of an ethnic group, is it?"

"YEFFET: No. We are interviewing every passenger with no exception....."