THE US authorities recently announced some security regulations that all US-bound airlines passengers should abide by. These regulations include a directive to stay seated and not to visit the toilet one hour before the flight lands. Passengers should also neither cover themselves with blankets nor try to know about the exact location they have reached when flying. The seating rule was however withdrawn later.
These procedures are ridiculous as they violate basic human rights and that also by a country that claims it is the torchbearer of human rights. This also demonstrates the way the US authorities want to deal with terrorism.
The US, with all its mighty security and intelligence machinery, is in a weak position with regards to carrying out preemptive steps against terrorism as well as in realizing its capabilities to upgrade its mechanism. The US is in this situation mainly because of its policy to collectively punish people who are also suffering from the scourge of terror more than its own citizens. Every passenger who belongs to the US’ list of countries that are subject to the new procedures is virtually a terrorist unless he can prove otherwise.
If the Americans are now voicing their fear at the prospect of Al-Qaeda recruiting Westerners to carry out terror attacks, they would at the end find themselves in a position when they will be looking at every human being on earth with suspicion. They would not be secure themselves beyond their borders. They would also be isolated from the world. They would also discover that terrorism bears no nationality or religion, and that it might strike them from within their own ranks.
It is not surprising for me if the next security procedures involve stripping naked people on US-bound flights. I cannot also rule out the possibility of them conducting postmortems of passengers before they board flights for the US.
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