Okay, now I’m scared. Everything I once took for granted is in doubt. How could a bunch of scary-looking terrorists with Arabic names hijack four airliners within the space of an hour? How could they succeed in using them to demolish the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? And, if we couldn’t stop that, how are we expected to believe that a dopey system like Star Wars is ever going to work? Or any of the counter-terrorism measures being bandied about?

Take "airport security"—a phrase now destined to join "military intelligence" in the American Dictionary of Oxymorons. Is there anything you can’t smuggle past airport security? We’ve seen investigative teams from 60 Minutes and the BBC—people with hunting knives, guns, sticks of dynamite, mock bombs and even machine guns (strapped to their backs)—blithely sail through the make-believe portal. Let’s see how huge a weapon we can sneak through: a grenade-launcher? A Stinger missile?

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a Daddy Warbucks look-alike if ever there was one, recently dismissed the imperfections of the current x-raying of baggage by saying, "It’s effect was more psychological than anything else." A sort of charade, in other words, that gives passengers a feeling of eternal vigilance, the checkpoint personnel merely actors in a symbolic drama. These are not the semi-skilled technicians I once took them for—just poor slobs earning minimum wage, working long hours at a tedious job, using technology originally designed for shoe stores to determine the right fit for a wingtip.

We tend to think of airline personnel as coming from a more qualified employment pool than that of fast-food workers. But at wages of $4.95-an-hour, how could they be? Some of them, it turns out, aren’t even American citizens. You mean some Algerian or Somali fanatic on a student visa could get a job at an airport checkpoint? Or a job as a baggage handler? Or food service "technician"? And why limit our fear to foreigners? There are plenty of scary Americans to go around, and lots of them are working in our airports (few of which, by the way, do any criminal-background checks).

But forget about these small-fry worries. Let’s talk about the big dogs, the FAA and the CIA—two organizations whose charter surely includes watching out for our safety. So how come they didn’t notice when Osama bin Laden told us what he was going to do? He actually said he was going to use commercial airliners to destroy U.S. landmarks. Now, admittedly he didn’t tell us which landmarks, but you would’ve thought that the FAA—at the very least—would have alerted air traffic controllers to monitor any plane veering radically from its flight plan. An official from the CIA yesterday blithely defended our lack of vigilance, telling CNN that terrorists "often make extreme threats in order to induce panic in the population." Well, they sure succeeded at that.

Remember the moment in Beetlejuice when Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis stand on their doorstep, peering out at a churning, nightmare world filled with primeval monsters? That’s how I felt last week, discovering (a bit late, perhaps) that the vigilance and expertise of our protectors is an illusion and that only a thin scrim separates us from the yawning terror. What if the people who constructed our cocoons are not really in control? What if they, you know, have absolutely no idea what they’re doing?

Flying (always a mildly terrifying idea if dwelt on too long) has long been an almost monotonous experience. Even the airport conspires to lull you into a kind of daze, as if some mild narcotic had been sprayed into the air. Standing on those endless slow-moving lines for the check-in counter, the repeated questions, the security checkpoint itself such a formality that I often expect to be asked, "Paper or plastic?" when I pick up my bags.

Once on the plane, only those with flying phobias ever say to themselves, "I am traveling at 600 miles an hour, 20,000 feet above the earth, in a metal tube carrying 50 tons of gasoline." The most common reaction to air travel is tedium. The narcotic effect of the hum of the engines, the rows of passengers reading and talking, the beige and avocado décor (the design equivalent of Prozac), the periodic arrival of snacks and dinners, the in-flight movie—the predictability and familiarity of it all soothes you into a kind of suspended animation. Every twenty minutes you resignedly look at your watch, adjust it for the next time zone and calculate how many more hours of monotony you’ll have to endure. The airline magazine’s very subject matter tells us that everything is normal; everything is okay.

Wondering how much all of this had changed in the last couple of weeks, I thought I’d call my friend Howard. What effect were the stringent new regulations having on air travel? Were they causing massive delays?

"You’d think so," said Howard, "but in many ways it’s been business as usual. Yesterday I was flying from Oakland to Burbank. I had a noon flight, so anticipating endless lines I got myself to the airport a couple of hours earlier than usual. This guy with Southwest Airlines on his cap comes out with one of those big carts. He takes my bags and leads me in, taking me right to the front of the line. The guy at the desk looks at my luggage. ‘Golf clubs?’ he asks, looking at my golf bag. He proceeds to check my clubs through without even opening the bag. This has all taken less than ten minutes. I then go through the checkpoint. I have a portable juicer in my carry-on bag and put the bag through. ‘Oh, this looks like a juicer,’ they say. Zip. It’s now only 10:15. I see there’s a 10:40 flight so I go up to the counter and ask if I can get on it.

"‘What are you going to do about the bags you checked in?’ the guy asks. I tell him I’ll pick up my rental car, do a few errands, then swing back to the Burbank airport and pick ’em up when they arrive. And, heaven help him, this poor deluded man agrees. So my bags, unopened, including a set of golf clubs, go unaccompanied on the 12 o’clock flight." By the way, my friend just paid with cash.

Submitted for your approval: one more hair-raising story. My friend X’s dad is a cop. When he goes—out of uniform—to pick her up at the airport, he doesn’t feel like going through the hassle of surrendering his gun so he just opens one of those doors that say "Airport Personnel Only" and walks down the hallway that by-passes the checkpoint.

Terrorists, you see, count on the Peter Principle. They rely on the fact that many of the people meant to protect us are not going to do their jobs. And it rarely fails. "Limitless are the civil servants who are indolent, insolent, and robotic," is the mantra of the Peter Principle, which states that: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence" because "in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties." Why? Because if you’re really good at something, you get promoted. If you’re really bad at it, you get fired. And if you’re just so-so, well folks, there you stay.

Let’s take the case of the affable fellow who guides people to the next available elevator in the lobby of a skyscraper. When the guy at the information desk leaves for another job, the Affable Guy takes his place. It’s not that much of a stretch, and he does a good job at it. So when the lobby manager retires, Affable Guy gets promoted to his job. This is still something within his capability, and he handles it so well that eventually he becomes supervisor of the building, a job he has absolutely no qualifications for (and no ability to handle). He has now reached his level of incompetence, a level from which he will probably never be promoted.

In the day-to-day world, we just put this down to bureaucratic stupidity, but in times of crisis this is the stuff of nightmare scenarios. A 767 has just crashed into Twin Tower Two, and the building manager of the adjacent Tower One announces over the P.A. that it’s safe for people to go back to their desks. When you hear accounts like this, all trust that "they must know what they’re doing" leaves you. Remember "they must know what they’re doing"? It’s what the passenger next to you said the last time your favorite airline took off in a snowstorm without de-icing the wings.

Eight years, and millions of dollars and experts later, they simply had no plan. Like, "if one tower gets blown up, evacuate the other tower." Or if, say, the Empire State Building gets blown up, evacuate both towers. People tell me, "They probably thought it was safer to stay put than evacuate." Well, of course they thought it was better! No one is suggesting the people in charge were evil. Just wrong, terribly wrong.

So what is the solution? Some say beefed-up security is the answer. More scrutiny, more inspectors. Oh, really? But aren’t these the same people who let the tragedy happen in the first place? Low-paid workers, career civil servants, somnambulistic bureaucrats. So mindlessly, so rotely do most people in big corporations do their jobs and so poorly compensated are they for their work that they consciously or unconsciously subvert the corporation they’re working for.

But that’s not all we’re gonna do, say the powers that be. We’re gonna get real hi-tech with these sumbitches. More gadgets, for one thing. We’re going to install $150,000 machines that will blow air on you as you pass through them, collecting particles that are then examined to see if they contain the chemicals used in explosives. In the future, who knows, machines that calibrate anxiety, guilt, patriotism, criminal intent? And, uh, just remind me again, who’s gonna run these gadgets?

We’ll have U.S. marshals riding shotgun on every commercial flight, they assure us. Yeah, that should do it. One Steven Seagal for every flight. But where exactly are you going to find 30,000 highly trained U.S. marshals to man every domestic flight that takes off daily? These guys, former night watchmen and mall police, are suddenly going to be capable of overcoming fanatic terrorists, disarming them and seeing that every commercial airline lands safely with the handcuffed suspects in custody? This plan might make things even more dangerous—what if the hijacker takes their guns?

We’re trying to build our own version of the Great Wall of China, a wall of gadgets, devices, procedures. But how are we going to keep "them" out, and how will we be able to distinguish them from us? History isn’t too encouraging in the matter of walls—stone, electronic or otherwise. The larger the country you’re trying to close off, the less likely your chances of succeeding. Especially if, like second century Rome or Ch’in Dynasty China, you’re the only empire going, which also happens to be our dilemma. Then everybody hates you, but at the same time everybody wants in. The Mongolians wanted into China so badly that they ended up invading and ruling it for most of China’s history.

Such absolute measures never succeed and are generally the brainchild of totalitarian regimes. The Great Wall itself was the project of China’s first Emperor, Shih Huang Ti, history’s first famous paranoiac megalomaniac. Borges’ famous meditation, "The Wall and the Books," sees Shih Huang Ti’s gargantuan fortification project as inseparable from his burning of every book that preceded his reign so that history might begin with him. Borges concludes by saying, "Walling in an orchard or a garden is ordinary, but not walling in an empire."

In Kafka’s story "The Great Wall of China," the piecemeal, gap-filled and seemingly pointless construction of the wall is initially compared to that other futile mega-project, the Tower of Babel, but its fundamental purpose is eventually seen to be that of giving a sense of unity to the diverse peoples of China. But unlike China, we are not a monoculture. In a sense, we have no way of differentiating ourselves from the rest of the world. We are the world, a melting pot, and as such should not behave like vengeful bullies out to eradicate an enemy far more elusive than any Viet Cong ever was.