Why?

Here’s a thought, from Mark Steyn:

If you had told an Englishman on Sept. 10, 2001, that within five years all hand luggage would be banned on flights from Britain, he’d have thought you were a kook. If you’d told an Englishwoman that all liquids would be banned except milk for newborn babies that could only be taken on board if the adult accompanying the child drinks from the bottle in front of a security guard, she’d have scoffed and said no one would ever put up with such a ludicrous imposition. But now it’s here. What other changes will the Islamists have wrought in another five years?

In the days after September 11, 2001, President Bush maintained that we could not allow Islamist threats to change how we lived our lived. Since then, that sentiment has become a wry joke (“If you don’t read by blog, the terrorists win!). Plenty of Chicken Littles have spent five years running hither and yon shrieking about how the administration has been eroding our civil rights and raping the Constitution and othre such silliness.

But what has really happened? We, the law-abiding citizens of the country have had to change how we live. We now accept hours of airport delays so we and our bags can be intimately searched. We accept that whenever a bomb goes off in Europe, our movements here in America will be restricted. Our tax money has been diverted to such terrorist-fighting equipment as patrol boats for police agencies who have no training nor expertise in using them.

For what, really? Does anyone truly think that searching fat white guys and little old Grandmas is actually making us any safer? Is there some validity to, to use one of Steyn’s examples, making some young British mother drink from a baby bottle to prove she’s not a terrorist?

I certainly don’t think so. I see a sad irony in the disconnect between what we say about our civil liberties and what we do with them.

Yeah, I’m about to bring up the old bugaboo called profiling.

Why, exactly, have we not fully realized that the attacks of 9/11, the 7/7 British subway bombings, the attacks on the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, the embassies in Africa, the Bali nightclub bombings, and a multitude of other terrorist attacks (and would-be terrorist attacks) ahve been perpetrated by a group of people who are childishy easy to define and identify? Why are we so afraid to tell people, “We are sorry, but until young Muslim men stop trying to kill us, we are going to have to inconvenience the rest of you Muslim men with additional security steps. We realize that you are, in all likelihood, not potential terrorists, but we must make the most efficient use of our law enforcement resources and this is the best way to do it.”?

Why?

I honestly don’t have the answer.