By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

When Joe Devin, 60, complains about taking off his shoes for a security guard at the airport, it isn't because he's blind or because the guard has become callous. It's because Devin has seen what happens when security becomes more important than freedom.

"I hope people don't think I'm being unpatriotic," he said. "But never has anybody run his hands over me as if I were made of gelignite, and I've lived under a military dictatorship in Indonesia and nearly the same thing in Malaysia."

"It's for your own protection," the guard told him.

Devin said he went home and did a little research. About 4,000 people died in the terrible Twin Towers tragedy. He compared that with some other government statistics.

In 1998, 4,800 U.S. citizens died of rheumatic fever, 4,700 of stomach ulcers, 4,500 of anemia and 4,100 of nutritional deficiency.

"So the odds of a U.S. citizen being killed by a terrorist are about the same as starving to death," said Devin, a Honolulu consultant who lives on Maunakea Street.

"Guards don't search you for food at the airport. The government doesn't send out starvation alerts. Yet we are constantly bombarded by terror alerts based on unverified reports we can't check.

"This is dangerous. I can see a steady progress of psychological control of the population. It begins with guards at the airport who treat us like children because they know what is good for us. ...

"It scares me because this danger is not coming from the Arabs but from ignorance of the American people and acceptance of the half-truths we've being fed."

Devin is the son of missionaries to Indonesia. He knows what happens when security guards take over. As a boy, he was slapped across the face by a soldier who didn't like what he said. He was searched every time he got on a plane or a boat.

One of his father's converts sold vegetables at the market. The wife of a military officer told her husband the peddler's prices were too high. The officer went to the market and beat the man into a coma. Devin, horrified, gave money to the family to pay for medical treatment.

He said at age 25 he was riding in the back of a truck when they came upon a group of soldiers in a village. An officer was beating a man, knocking him to the ground again and again.

"The villagers didn't dare help him. My anger flared. I jumped up but my mother grabbed my wrist. Then I realized that this was very dangerous. I sat down and watched the man be beaten."

Devin believes that once something like a Department of Homeland Security is in place, it's difficult to remove because all the people in it want to keep their job.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-0873.