Phil Brennan
Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2001

Not long ago, Lyn Nofziger raged about being told he couldn't board a plane with the small penknife he's been carrying around for years – even when going in and out of the White House when he worked there. These days it seems that knives of any kind, regardless of how tiny and harmless they might be, are now taboo for the flying public.

There's a word for all of this: silly! Egregiously silly!

Moreover, at a time when the president is urging all of us to take to the skies, his government is doing everything possible to discourage travelers from flying what have become the decidedly unfriendly skies.

This is bad news for the airlines, all of which are having severe financial difficulties. By adopting the harshest and most foolish security precautions, the government has caused hordes of longtime airline passengers to shun commercial flight. Who wants to pay big bucks for the privilege of being treated like cattle.

All it takes to make one uneasy about flying is a quick look at the photos of travelers standing in long lines at airport terminals, surrounded by their luggage. I include myself among those dissuaded from flying.

Tomorrow I'm going out of town to visit my firefighter/paramedic son and watch him receive what I'm told is only the second Medal of Valor ever awarded to a member of his county's fire department.

I'm taking the train. If there was a way of getting there by air and cutting the travel time by three quarters, I'd still go Amtrak. I simply refuse to allow myself to be herded in a most annoyingly bovine fashion.

(Not that the security idiocy hasn't also hit train travel. I had to show the ticket agent photo ID and will have to do the same thing when boarding, but at least there aren't any long lines involved in the process. I asked the passenger agent if Amtrak feared I'd hijack the train to Cuba. He shrugged.)

Now don't tell me all of these largely symbolic security arrangements are necessary. The precautions required to discourage hijacking or blowing up aircraft – hijack-proofing doors to the flight deck, arming the pilots and having air marshals aboard – are already in the works. Screening carry-on luggage and checked baggage helps lessen the danger of anyone carrying explosives aboard.

That's about all that can be done. Anything more – for instance, putting armed National Guardsmen in the terminals to stand around and look threatening – is just plain useless. It's symbolism and that's all it is.

Let's face it. There isn't any such thing as perfect security. If someone wants to smuggle explosives aboard an airliner badly enough, they will find a way to do it.

Moreover, the danger of a hijacker pulling off another Black Tuesday, taking over a plane and crashing it into a target, is long since past. The terrorists who committed the Sept. 11 outrage spent only God knows how much time carefully planning that operation.

That kind of opportunity, time and preparation is no longer possible. The feds are no longer asleep at the switch, as they seem to have been prior to 9-11.

I would hope that somebody up there in the Seat of All Wisdom on the Potomac would stop and think about all this airport nonsense and apply a little common sense to the matter of airport security.

Until they do, much of the flying public will remain grounded, the airlines will go deeper into the red, and the terrorists will have achieved what terror is meant to achieve, scaring us witless and hitting the U.S. economy in the pocket.

In the meantime, beware of somebody coming up with a Brady bill to ban the possession and sale of tweezers and tiny penknives – especially when on the persons of a police chief or a former White House director of communications.

Whom the Gods would destroy, they first drive mad.

It appears as if the gods are angry.

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee that won statehood for Alaska.

He can be reached at pvb@pvbr.com.

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