All good questions, and there are no easy answers. I suppose you have to decide if you want to risk being hauled off to jail and being convicted for assaulting someone on a plane for no good reason, or if you may be stopping a devastating terrorist attack.
And I'll ask you (as I just asked someone else), how do you tell the difference between "some ME guy" and some Hindu from India?
It's a judgment call and, like I said, one with no easy answers. My only solution is that I won't fly any airline other than El-Al, until the others stop with the politically correct horse crap and start aggressively profiling and investigating each passenger before they ever board the planes.
That would not satisfy some. El Al searches everyone don't they? Some people think they should never be searched as long as they're white, and if they are, there are howls of injustice.
you can tune into an episode of COPS any night, and see police tactics 100x more aggressive then what these air marshalls are seemingly able to do - all in the name of catching someone for buying $10 worth of drugs, or in some cases for traffic offenses.
I agree with the rest of your post - I haven't flown since 9-11 and have no plans to do so.