Anyone who has flown on commercial airlines since 9-11 knows that America has changed dramatically. Invasive and humiliating searches have become routine procedure. Long lines, delays, metal detectors, explosive residue detectors, partial disrobing, wanding, pat-downs, multiple I.D. checks, intrusive questioning about your destination — all part of the price of security in the war on terror, right?

Millions of Americans, no doubt, resignedly submit to these indignities, inconveniences and erosions of individual privacy and freedom consoled in the belief that, given the terror threat, these measures somehow are making us safer. After all, on a good day, these airport security measures take only a few minutes and are relatively pain-free. Unless, that is, you are infirm or injured. At a recent airport security check, for instance, I witnessed a frail, arthritic, old woman (perhaps 90 years of age) going through the routine. An insensitive Transportation Security Administration agent was ordering her to lift her arms out higher, perpendicular to her body, so that she could be searched with the electric wand. The feeble woman, who was as thin as a matchstick, complained that her arthritis prevented her from lifting her arms any higher. It was obvious that the search procedures were causing her physical pain, in addition to mortification.

At my next airport inspection, I saw a similar outrage, as an elderly couple (probably in their late 70s) ahead of me in line received the third degree. The wife was injured, in a wheelchair, with her foot in a cast. Her husband was complying with security procedures, but with obvious mounting exasperation. He had, as directed, taken off his belt and shoes, watch, etc. and unbuttoned his pants fly and was going through the wanding and pat-down. But his attention was directed toward his wife, whom the TSA personnel had forced to get up out of the wheelchair so they could inspect the chair and search her. The poor woman was in obvious pain, yet she was forced to hobble through the magnetometer and then stand on the painted footprints for a wanding and further examination. Due to her age and condition (remember she had a cast on one leg, so was trying to balance all her weight on the other), she nearly toppled over a couple times during the process. The husband, teeth clenched and blood pressure rising, was manifestly infuriated at the treatment meted out to his crippled, suffering spouse.

I observed all of this while undergoing my own “special” search. As one who flies frequently, I realize that every so often I will be randomly chosen to receive a more extensive, violative search of my person and possessions. For me, that has not been more than, say, one out of ten times that I fly — until my most recent experience, a two-week speaking tour of 15 cities. A “SSSS” designation in the bottom right-hand corner of each of the tickets in my stack signaled that I was to be treated to “special” searches at every airport. One begins to grasp the terrible potential of a police state when one is subjected to personal searches and interrogations on a daily basis.

“Is it not better to endure these annoying searches than suffer another 9-11 attack?” ask the defenders of “homeland security.” But are the two necessarily even connected; is the one even remotely likely to prevent the other? Not when other government policies are rendering these measures completely meaningless as security against terrorists. Let’s look at a few examples.

Protecting Iraq’s borders but not our own. In March, Bush administration officials announced that the U.S. will spend $300 million to beef up Iraq’s border security, doubling the number of border police to 16,000. “We owe this to the Iraqi people,” U.S. occupation chief Paul Bremer said. But, at the same time, congressional testimony revealed that the budget of the U.S. Border Patrol (which numbers fewer than 10,000 agents) is being cut by $18 million! How can our government claim that we “owe” the Iraqi people more than we owe our own citizens? How can we accept claims that we must provide more protection for Iraq’s borders than our own? Will sealing Iraq’s borders do more for U.S. “homeland security” than regaining control over our own borders?

Hammering U.S. citizens, appeasing foreigners. Even while subjecting U.S. citizens to ever more intrusive security screenings, the Bush administration has dropped the requirement that Mexicans crossing into the U.S. be subjected to fingerprint checks. Measures adopted following the 9-11 attacks required cross-checking Mexican entrants with the entry-exit visa database to screen for criminals, terrorists and visa overstays (three of the 9-11 hijackers had overstayed their visas).

Turning a blind eye to Customs Service failings. Two and a half years after 9-11, the U.S. Customs Service is still undermanned, commercial airline cargo is rarely inspected, and unauthorized entry to airport runway and cargo areas is scandalously easy.

These and other examples that could be cited indicate that — despite all the rhetoric about protecting the homeland — our top policymakers are more willing to subject compliant American citizens to Gestapo-style police-state measures than to provide genuine homeland security. And that is not going to change until an aroused U.S. citizenry demands it.

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