MAXIMUM INSECURITY IN THE HOMELAND---MARTIN LUTHER KING’S ANSWER

What does it profit one, if maximum security gained, at the price of your own soul?

Airport Security in the homeland. We inflict humiliation upon ourselves in the vain and un-necessary attempt to ward off every possible threat, no matter how empty. We genuflect to a Dept. of Homeland Security incapable of providing what it advertizes. This agency doesn't understand that it is actually in partnership with the manufacturers of fear.

Our former head of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff took 10 other top DHS officials, and the former head of CIA, to form Chertoff Group, a defense industry consultant group. "After the arrest of the underwear bomber last Christmas, Chertoff hit the airwaves and wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post advocating the full-body scanning systems without disclosing that Rapiscan Systems was a client of his firm." 1 Bingo, the government buys 300. There is controversy as to whether they're even effective. That's an in-country aspect of the fear manufacturing complex. On the outside the DHS nemesis--the terrorists--also profit by our government's inadvertent cooperation in their fear industry.

When Yemeni terrorists send a nervous college kid with make- shift bombs in his pants on a plane to Detroit on Christmas, they are not serious about destroying the plane. If they were, they'd choose a clever dedicated 30 year old who'd been al Qaeda for 15 years and lost 2 brothers in firefights with American soldiers. He'd be outfitted with a high-cost high-tech bomb that wouldn't fail.

In this case they were only attacking our mental stability. They must be very satisfied as we subject ourselves to the patting down of private parts, and install full body scanners—all to the tremendous inconvenience of air travel. We have renounced our freedoms of self- respect and courage, because of the minimalist efforts of two-bit terrorists. Why?

Manufactured fear. We are wasting a lot of money, and surrendering mental ground on this. A writer for the Wall Street Journal in his 1-09-10 "Undressing the Terror Threat" put it bluntly. "As to the question of what the government should do rather than keep playing Terrorball, the answer is simple: stop treating Americans like idiots and cowards." 2 The question has been posed in the media, "Would you want to travel on a plane that didn't board through patters and scanners?" My answer is most certainly, yes. So would the vast majority of Americans I believe.

Martin Luther King had the answer—how to vanquish the violent beast, in whatever country he may be roaring about. "Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that." How? "Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people," -- his first principle for organizing society. As the remembrance of his birthday approaches, lets sidestep the scanners—march on to make justice and peace take flight.