Frequent Profiler Program

Frequent Profiler Program
For the last 12+ years I have flown a lot… but I guess that’s a matter of perspective. For some ‘a lot’ of travel could mean a couple times a year, for me that has meant flying a couple times a week. In 1998 I started working for a major cruise line and while traveling to many of the ports of call, racked up a lot of frequent flier miles. Those miles I was accruing resulted in countless upgrades to first class and made what could have been a brutal amount of wear and tear on my body almost livable. Then, September 11th, 2001 arrived. I had to travel 3 days later so I listened for the travel advisories with no idea what would come next but wanting to be prepared for anything. The first directive to come down was get to the airport extra early. I got up 3 hours early for my flight which at the time had me up around 3am. Bleary eyed I dragged myself through check-in, took the tram to the other side for security and got in the new lines that made the ones at Disneyland look like, well, a day at an amusement park. I wove through the ropes in a mass of humanity with the same feeling corn must get in the small intestine. The big shock though was about to happen. I was exhausted and through most of the line I had been staring at my feet. When I got to the front of what was now the ‘pre-screening area’ I was confronted with a voice asking to see my ticket and ID. A middle eastern voice! My immediate thought was, “ No you cannot! Can I see yours?” After all, I had been deputized by Dubya to be vigilant. The first order of the day as far as I could see was weed terrorists out of the ranks of TSA!
That day was my first glimpse at the future of travel and travel security in the age of politically correctness. Over the next 9 years more plots would unfold that would add challenges to travel. Soon after was the ‘shoe bomber’. Ever since then the great unwashed masses have been exposing their nastiest appendages while their shoes are x-rayed for bomb materials. I don’t know what making sure they are devoid of explosives accomplishes, most of the shoes coming off have enough stench and disease on them to eat a hole in a fuselage. (And while we cry about the cost of airport security I have no idea why Odor Eaters hasn’t been made the official sponsor of the screening area?)
Next some knucklehead decided to put liquid explosives in his carry-on. Now we can’t bring enough shampoo or cologne on our trips to smell decent. That’s dumb, that used to be one of the ways you could tell the difference between a traveler and a terrorist, the stench. Not to mention the cottage industry that has become selling 4 dollar bottles of water on the other side of security because you can’t even bring beverages with you! (Price gouging Congress? I think so!) And why can’t the terrorists ever make a bomb out of something we don’t want to fly with, like a screaming baby? If just one jihadist would shape some C-4 like a screaming brat we wouldn’t have to fly with them anymore. You would have to gate check them and they could fly underneath with the luggage. I digress.
As a knee jerk reaction to make us ‘feel’ better the government has created a new multi-billion dollar agency and created a myriad of rules that really do nothing but stroke our tummies and tell us everything is going to be okay. The reality remains that while 10 people barely qualified to roll back prices at Wal-Mart gather around Gramma’s overnight bag to tell her that she can’t take her V05 and Pond’s night cream on the flight because it’s 3.2 ounces, while Ali Baba and his thieves are stowing their luggage in the overhead and sharpening a seatbelt in to a shank. Why? Because we can’t profile! Dare we call a spade a spade (nothing racial here, for the sake of argument we’ll call it an entrenching tool ). We know what terrorists look like and they’re not snowbirds from Indiana en route to their trailer sabbatical in south Florida. They’re not young families dressed in Mickey Mouse ears either. They might even be American but they are of a certain ‘descent’ with a certain ‘appearance’. Are you following this TSA? Obama administration? We are not Kevin Bacon on a roof looking for hidden tremor monsters underground, the enemy has a definite look, look for it! You’ve asked us to be vigilant, is it too much to ask for you to do the same?
So far the best the Obama administration can come up with is, “the system worked”. The ‘system’ had a crack in it and that crack was stuffed with explosives. We should be damn grateful Oprah wasn’t the underwear bomber, she would have been less inept and would have had a lot more explosives hidden. So what system were they talking about? Apparently the same one that stopped Richard Reid…the bravery and good sense of the traveling public. Some Dudley Do-Right business flyer probably eye-balled Nigerian Umar like my five kids eye the last piece of pizza, just waiting to pounce. Thankfully he did spring to action before the fizzle of the fuse made it past the taint to the boom-boom.
All of this brings me to a point, it looks like it's still up to us. The right to keep some bare arms that can be used to knock down threats as they come up. I’m not saying we go from vigilant to vigilante but I got news for you fellow fliers, I’m watching you. If I see so much as Paula Abdul acting suspicious on a flight it’s time to say, “Let’s Roll!”