you could make the same argument about border security. everyday on FR, we have people who say "seal the border, stop the terrorists". I could easily make the case that the border cannot be sealed adequately to stop a small team of determined and well funded terrorists from crossing - so that logic says, why bother having any border security (immigration control aside). if random subway searches are useless because the odds of catching someone is too low to justify the civil rights intrusion, then border security isn't worth it either because ths odds of stopping a dedicated group from crossing with the 1000s of miles of borders we have, is too.
and we could run down a list of other things:
- random searches of trucks entering NYC tunnels. again, low odds of capture, so should these be eliminated?
- random boarding and searching of cargo ships entering NY harbor by the coast guard. again, low odds of capture, so should we eliminate that too?
I could go on and on - each individual security activity has "low odds" of success - should we eliminate them all?
what's left that we can do? because internment camps for muslims isn't going to happen, we both know that.
That would actually be an accurate statement. The reason to seal the border is stop the millions of immigrants who come here illegally and severely burden our social services.
Making it harder for potential terrorists would just be a potential benefit.
Note that if a terrorist was stopped by the border patrol and then blew themselves up, it wouldn't have the same effect as a terrorist detonating themselves in a crowded subway security line.
That point is very important as a terrorist that is stopped from entering a subway car can kill just as many people and cause just as much harm if he detonates while in the security line. This is truly a "feel good" measure that the left usually enjoys - I am surprised that conservatives are being fooled by it.
The border argument is not an apt comparison at all. We have authorized checkpoints and established procedures for entering the country legally. Thus we can conclude that ALL other entries are illegal. And while we can't seal the borders, we do indeed have the technology and other resources to put one hell of a dent in the influx.
Moving beyond the borders (pun not intended), the obvious common-sense solution is profiling. There's not one solitary thing about it that's evil. It's just one more example of sacrificing national security for the sake of nothing more than idiotic political correctness shoved down our throats by a small minority of the population. Reality is that if you focus on the problem group, the odds of preventing something rise dramatically. Since our current authorities are absolutely unwilling to do that, however, I don't know that I have any solutions. We're trying to run a race with an eighty-pound bag of concrete strapped on our back.
The random searches will in practice be even worse, of course, since they will probably be handled like the random searches on airline boarding. Not only can likely targets not be afforded greater scrutiny, they're actually afforded LESS by rules that say no more than two Middle-Eastern males can be subjected to secondary screening. It's insanity on display.
MM