The 'War on Terror'  Email Print   Then — I can’t stand it:
“Let’s be pre-pared, not scared.”   Apparently the intercom is
the only chance the drivers will ever have to be publicly
noticed, and they make the most of it. “Let’s be prepared, not
scared.” The phrase had the cutesy fatuity of a fifty-thousand
dollar bumper-sticker slogan bought from an ad agency. Don’t run
with scissors.   There is something unconvincing about so many
of these terrorism preventives. Yet they are everywhere. The
papers carried stories about New York’s random searches of
passengers on the subway, for example. Washington’s subway was
pondering the same idea.  Random searches? If you randomly
search every fiftieth passenger in rush hour, you have a two
percent chance of catching a terrorist. Now that makes me feel
safe. “Random”? Who are they kidding? The searches won’t be
random. They will be searches of whoever the searchers feel like
searching. Quite irrationally, officials said that anyone who
didn’t consent to being searched cou