Reactionary Security Policy

Patrick Smith at Jetlagged, a New York Times travel blog, eviscerates our absurd airport security system. Anyone who flies regularly knows just how reactionary our response to the threat of terrorism has been. And anyone who cares to remember knows how the airlines lined up to suckle at the teat of government largesse while the debris was still settling at Ground Zero and the Pentagon, despite the fact that those same airlines were both responsible for the lax security that prevailed and that they had always aggressively resisted encroachment on their ability to conduct their own security as they saw fit. The airlines and the attendant airport apparatus failed. So naturally they wanted to get paid for what they lost as the result of their own malfeasance when air traffic was shut down. I am always astounded by how this little pas de deux got buried amidst everything surrounding 9/11.