At least if you move to England you won't have to worry and complain about Crazy Americans anymore...
But it's so much fun poking fun at Crazy Americans
...you'll be too busy worrying and complaining about crazy English folks!
If the gnome guys worry you, just wait until you meet the Morris Men !!
Back to our topic - the off topic topic that is ... terrorism:
It's interesting to note that by far the most effective security measure is proactive intelligence gathering. Far more terrorist plots have been stopped early on, than have ever been stopped at the security barrier at an airport. Almost every measure taken at the airport is done as a reaction to previous incidents; perhaps it's a little extreme to call them knee-jerk reactions, but there's certainly no harm in calmly re-assessing the measures to see if they're all appropriate.
For instance it was always a little draconian to ban all liquids on flights; it would have been perfectly possible to ban all liquids of unknown origin whilst allowing people to buy and carry on drinks (or indeed fill bottles of tap water).
Security scans
are more than a little invasive, and I normally insist on being bought dinner before being groped like that[0]. It's a tricky issue, because security like this probably won't stop much as the terrorists will be aware of the procedures and work around them, but without these measures the terrorists will find things easier.
It's easy to concentrate too much on the possibilities of aircraft after events like 9-11, but there are other avenues of attack for the terrorist. Indeed aircraft are a relatively rare method of attack, and theoretically not the most lethal either - imagine a chemical attack on a crowded sports stadium.
For those who believe that simple racial profiling is good enough, bear in mind that not all terrorists look like Osama on a bad hair day. There are plenty of people from Islamic countries that wouldn't rate a second glance in a racist crowd - I personally know someone from Egypt who looks as much a white Anglo-Saxon as I do. Besides which terrorists have been known to use proxy bombers (such as the IRA) - it's not too much of a leap of imagination to see that unknowing proxy bombers could be arranged in a world where people have taken money to act as drugs mules.
It's also a good idea to keep a sensible sense of proportions about all this - statistically you are more likely to get killed in a traffic accident on the way to the airport than blown up in a plane. That's not an argument for doing nothing though.
0: Departing from Zaragossa, Spain some years ago. The security people were a bit twitchy and
very thorough. I don't know how attractive TSA may be, but this Spanish security guard was pretty hot - difficult to get too excited with someone pointing their SMG at you though. The day after I left, ETA lobbed a grenade onto the runway.
