Security Theater

Stratfor, which is a fairly conservative bunch, says that profiling people based on their nation of origin is a measure that is "doomed to fail". Without directly saying so, they noted that the enhanced screening for citizens of 14 nations was only a bit of security theater. These two observations were interesting:

When we look back at the early jihadist attacks against the United States, we see that many perpetrators matched the stereotypical Muslim profile. In the killing of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing and the thwarted 1993 New York Landmarks Plot, we saw a large contingent of Egyptians, including Omar Abdul-Rahman (aka “the Blind Sheikh”), ElSayyid Nosair, Ibrahim Elgabrowny, Mahmud Abouhalima and several others. In fact, Egyptians played a significant role in the development of the jihadist ideology and have long constituted a very substantial portion of the international jihadist movement — and even of the core al Qaeda cadre. Because of this, it is quite surprising that Egypt does not appear on the TSA’s profile list.

And another example:

Frankly, there have been far more jihadist plots that have originated in the United Kingdom than there have been plots involving Nigerians, and yet Nigeria is on the list and the United Kingdom is not. Because of this, a British citizen (or an American, for that matter) who has been fighting with al Shabaab in Somalia could board a flight in Nairobi or Cairo and receive less scrutiny than an innocent Nigerian flying from the same airport.

It would be nice if we had a government that both treated Americans as grown-ups and acknowledged that basing counter-terror strategy on paperback novels and television shows is a really dumb idea. But whether Democratic or Republican, that doesn't seem to happen.

Even if they tried, the shrieking heads in the media would never let them do it.