TSA's Kabuki Dance And The Theater Of The Absurd

From The American Spectator:

AmSpecBlog


TSA’s Kabuki Dance and the Theater of the Absurd

By John R. Guardiano on 11.24.10 @ 3:48PM



Thirty minutes before we board an aircraft, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), God bless 'em, goes through a big and elaborate Kabuki dance.



And just as people on the dance floor sometimes get a little carried away and go too far, so too do the TSA scanners sometimes push the limits of decency as it were. You know: pat down, feel up, whatever!



Now, if I thought this actually made us safer, maybe I wouldn't mind the indignity of it all. But as I say, I think it's all a big Kabuki dance done for show, in order to create a facade or veneer of security. I have no illusions, though, that any of these so-called safety precautions are actually making us safer and more secure.



And at least one analyst, Mark Hyman, a former intelligence officer, agrees with me. Hyman has written a superb, fact-filled post here at The American Spectator. His conclusion:



In nearly a decade, there is not a single report of a terrorist having been caught during the TSA screening process. No bombs have been discovered. No hijackings have been thwarted.



For the TSA to claim it has made the nation's skies safer is as absurd as the rooster taking credit for the sun rising each morning. Observant passengers have caught more terrorist-wannabes than the 67,000 TSA employees...



The TSA is fueled by political correctness run amuck. Its sole accomplishments to date have been establishing a sizable airport presence and humiliating passengers...



It is long past time to disband the TSA. Replace it with an effective, free market system that actually works.



Hyman's post ought to be required reading for every member of Congress. It's that good and that compelling.



And if the new Republican House of Representatives wants to do right by the American people, then perhaps it ought to start by carefully reviewing the bureaucratic problems and the bureaucratic ineptitude that plague the TSA.



House Republicans also should begin exploring how to replace the TSA with a modern 21st-century screening system that inconveniences the terrorists rather than the patriotic flying public.