Travelers bear brunt of post 9/11 sacrifices

Sadly, for anyone who enjoys traveling, much of that change has been for the worse -- and conditions continue to deteriorate.

Shocked by the brutality of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government and people have rightfully resolved to never again let down our guard. Apart from military actions the country has undertaken, we have spent billions of dollars and spawned sprawling institutions such as the Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration to protect our national borders and safeguard our airways. Although a tragedy of the magnitude of 9/11 has so far been averted, we have yet to regain our sense of security.

Worse, in the process, we have sacrificed a great deal.

There is now a wall of suspicion that regards every traveler as a potential threat, in effect considered guilty until proven innocent. We now spend extra hours at airports, arriving earlier to catch flights that are increasingly departing late.

Citizens and legal residents who innocently run afoul of a rule can have their journeys upended. How many travelers have found themselves on "no-fly" lists through some coincidence of their name? How many air terminals have been shut down or flights delayed or diverted because of security situations that turned out to be false alarms?

Personal freedom concerns have run afoul of Homeland Security programs, such as its Automatic Targeting System, which was designed to calculate the security risks presented by ordinary American travelers.

And we've also become ungracious hosts. Foreign visitors are harassed at U.S. borders, sometimes for arbitrary reasons. Where once guests were received with a smile, they are now often met with a peremptory snarl. Foreigners are often detained, cross-examined, fingerprinted, even sent straight back from where they came, all in the name of domestic security concerns.

Even on domestic flights, foreign-looking travelers, whatever that may mean, are subject to special scrutiny simply because someone believes they look suspicious or are acting out of the ordinary. Congress recently passed a "good faith" law to protect people who raise concerns about suspicious-looking travelers from potential lawsuits for false accusations or overactive xenophobia.

Given greetings like that, it's a wonder anyone still wants to visit our country, despite the fact that exchange rates have made the United States a bargain for foreigners. These economics are clearly a major reason that foreign visitation is up. According to the Department of Commerce, 21.5 million people visited during the first six months of 2007, an 8 percent increase over the same period in 2006.

Traveling abroad for us also has become considerably more complicated, notwithstanding the most inconvenient absence of all foreign flights from Pittsburgh International.

For one, we now need passports to fly back from Canada and Mexico. But the demand for new documents so overwhelmed the State Department that many travelers didn't get new passports in time for their departure. To ease that burden, the government has offered an extension until Oct. 1 for travelers whose applications got bogged in the system.

Full implementation of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative's measure requiring passports for land crossings has been postponed twice already, in large part because of the chaos that would ensue at borders and passport offices.

While U.S. travelers abroad are still generally regarded well at most places, our collective reputation has been subject to increasing disdain for unilateral policies we have pursued. According to the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, majorities of the population in 13 of 15 countries surveyed said the United States is overplaying its role as world policeman. Majorities in 10 countries do not believe the United States can be trusted to act responsibly in the world.

So six years after 9/11, it's fair to ask the question: What have we become?

More important, what will we have become six years from now? Rather than isolating ourselves behind ever higher walls of fear, let's hope we can find a way to regain our national confidence, composure and former stature in the world.