Case of overkill

The security arrangements put in place by the US Embassy, at its 9/11 Memorial service on Thursday at All Saints Anglican Church, including the scanning of all of those invited and a detailed search of their personal effects, as reported in Friday’s issue of Newsday, were a clear case of overkill. It was in poor taste to invite persons to the service, including relatives of Trinidadians and Tobagonians, who died in the September 11, 2001 airplane attack and destruction of New York’s World Trade Centre, and then subject them to this treatment.

We accept, however, that should gate crashers have been discovered, then subjecting them to being scanned and their personal effects searched, followed by turning the individuals over to the Police would have been understandable. Meanwhile, all invited guests could have been required to walk with their invitations to the Church service, along with some form of identification, to be demanded if they were not readily known to their hosts. Did the United States Embassy expect that one or more of its specially selected guests was a potential terrorist? Or was the scan and search exercise, with an eye to the publicity and discussion it would have generated, designed to create the impression that a terrorist attack at the Memorial at All Saints was possible, so as to justify maintaining the placing of barriers at the head of Marli Street?

What tactical advantage, political or military, could have been possibly gained by terrorists seeking to disrupt the Memorial at All Saints Church. Was it because there were foreign diplomats, among others, attending? Is the US Embassy, by its security measures instituted on Thursday at All Saints implying that parishioners attending regular Church services there are constantly at potential risk, given its close proximity to the Embassy? It should have been enough that a guest be allowed to identify himself/herself without having to undergoing the embarrassment of being treated with inferred suspicion. Clearly, Thursday’s manoeuvre was an exercise in game playing, and a tasteless one at that. Are we to assume that all churches and/or temples or mosques around the world, in which US diplomatic missions or Consulates General held memorial services on Thursday conducted similar humiliating exercises? For it must have been humiliating to the guests, who were subjected to the scanning, as well as to the searching of their personal effects. Or was it simply a case of might is right, or was it one of tactless indifference to the feeling of guests?