Duck and Cover

When I was in grammar school, we had to duck under our desks when we had a "bomb drill" to protect us from atomic attack. The following year, we had to go into the hall and crouch down with our heads toward the wall. The year after that, we had to crouch with our heads toward the center of the hall. Shortly after that, we stopped having them at all. In retrospect, it seems pretty pathetic, even idiotic. The odds of such excercises having any benefit were vanishingly small.
And so it is with the new security regime this country is under. We're going to look back at the airport screenings, pass badges, security guards, etc., etc., as brummagem attempts to make the populace feel they can do something against terrorism. The problem is that we're in a war of (religious) ideas - something everyone seems reluctant to say out loud - which cannot be won be force of arms (or security). There is a certain proportion of religious zealots who will spend the rest of their days trying to bring down everything non-Islam. They would only be thwarted by demonstrating to them that their religion is a myth invented to control adherents, like all religions. In order to persuade them of that (assuming they would even entertain the idea), you would have to trot out history, science and logic. But of course, any tool one could employ to demonstrate that Islam is based on myth could be used to demonstrate any other religion is a myth - like Christiantity, Judaism, Mormonism and all the rest. And nobody wants to go there! Instead, we wage war and engage in these silly security exercises - silly because they have no hope of making us secure. How much safer am I, or the country, now that I have to wave a photo ID to get into the building I have worked in for nearly thirty years? It has been widely conceded that the security measures have been a colossal waste of money. Yet, we are paralyzed, as a country, by the lock religion has on our national outlook. Religous zealotry dooms us all to war. Again.