The Transportation Safety Administration is bringing the war home – and the American people don’t like it one bit. Stories of TSA outrages are everywhere, from the "Don’t touch my junk" guy to that photo of a nun in full robes being searched by a TSA thuglet. Talk radio is up in arms, Judge Napolitano is having a conniption, and both liberals and conservatives seem to be uniting around a general consensus that this level of intrusiveness cannot be allowed to stand. Yet what is to be done?
Rep. Ron Paul has introduced legislation in Congress that would forbid government employees from groping, poking, inserting, or otherwise violating one’s person, and prosecute them for doing what would be illegal if an ordinary citizen dared try it. Unfortunately, the bill isn’t likely to go anywhere – and, even if it did, passage wouldn’t get to the root of the problem. Because the real source of our troubles isn’t the TSA, or Homeland Security, nor is it any of the clueless bureaucrats who populate these agencies: the real problem, as Rep. Paul understands very well, is our foreign policy of permanent war.
Since the end of the cold war, US foreign policy has been focused on maintaining our imagined position as the world’s sole superpower, and that means intervening in every "crisis," arbitrating every dispute, dispensing dollars and discipline to the elites of every nation. Hypnotized by the myth of our alleged invulnerability, which is just another aspect of our much-touted "American exceptionalism," the 9/11 terrorist attacks traumatized the national psyche. A good part of the rage that followed the attacks was rooted in this illusion-shattering effect, and there was only one way to repair the damage: the rampage that began with the invasion of Iraq, extended into Central Asia, and, today, shows no signs of ending.
The problem, however, is that this response has only succeeded in underscoring our vulnerabilities. The Shoe Bomber compelled us to give up our shoes to the TSA. The Underwear Bomber gave the government access to our genitalia. And soon enough the Suppository Bomber will give them free entry to the very crevasses of our personhood, and what is left of our dignity will perish along with the Constitution.
