I can’t figure out if this is hilarious or depressing:

Yes, that’s right — the “War on Terror” is now so overwhelming that terrorists have apparently started using it instead of actual terror. By leaving innocuous but suspicious-looking bags around, they get to have actual genuine authorities of the state do all the dirty work of shutting down huge swaths of a city, evacuating buildings, and arresting or interrogating innocent people.

In one way, it’s the ultimate in asymmetric warfare, but in another, it’s a lot like AIDS — which tricks the body’s immune system into attacking itself.

And, just like AIDS, I’m not too sure there’s an easy cure. Too many people are so afraid of OMGterrorz!!1! that they’ll allow the guv’mint to do just about anything in the name of “security.”

(via BB)

There was an incident involving air marshals yesterday night — a suspicious man was confronted, there was chatter about him “lighting his shoe” and military jets were scrambled to shadow the jet, which eventually landed safely in Denver.

The story emerging today is that it was a diplomat from Qatar, who wanted to sneak a cigarette in the bathroom, and claimed he had diplomatic immunity to do so. According to this New York Times story, the Qatari made “sarcastic comments that the marshals took as a threat.”

My first thought: No way was anything threatened except the authority and egos of the marshals. Despite someone breaking the rules, I very seriously doubt that anyone thought this was a legit terror threat.

But now I’m thinking maybe the air marshal authority should be challenged. Boing Boing points me to a statement made by U.S. Congressman John J. Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.) — a politician that they describe as a “paleoconservative Republican.” He’s calling for the abolition of the air marshal service.

Why? How about because it costs $860 million a year to send 4,000 air marshals on their flights. Number of arrests since the program started? About 4.2 a year.

Yes, you read that right. It takes 1,000 people and $200 million to arrest a single person — and those are mainly rowdy drunks that, in previous years, passengers and airline employees would have been able to handle. I mean, it’s not like they have weapons, right? They don’t even have metal utensils.

Worse? As Duncan points out, there have been more air marshals arrested — for things like smuggling, domestic violence and drunk driving — than arrests they have made.

Duncan quotes Professor Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania:

“Nearly 7 years after September 11, 2001,” he wrote this last year, “what accounts for the vast discrepancy between the terrorist threat facing America and the scale of our response? Why, absent any evidence of a serious terror threat, is a war to on terror so enormous, so all-encompassing, and still expanding?  The fundamental answer is that al Qaeda’s most important accomplishment was not to hijack our planes but to hijack our political system.”