What? So you can have attacks on your country without requiring the world to go into lockdown, without having to invade several countries and without having to molest every traveler?
Have you ever been here? There are cameras on all highways that recognize license plates and track the movement over every car on the road network (cfr: the ease with which they tracked the whereabouts of the father who killed his children a few weeks ago), it has the most phone taps per inhabitant (to the extent that if you look at the data, it seems like somebody accidentally types a few numbers too much when typing it into Excel, that's how far we are removed from the runner up), and in general the amount of information the government has on every citizen is staggering (e.g. the age at which you first grew pubes (!) ).
At Schiphol you are searched at will - a few years ago I was on a flight back from the Caribbean and everybody on the plane was searched - thoroughly, more intense than when you are searched e.g. at sports events. Every city has autonomous authority to designate certain areas as 'search at will' areas - police can (and will), without cause, search you and your belongings (including your car - US doctrine about the car being an extension of a man's house? Hahaha, yeah, in the sense that it doesn't take much to search your house, either...). Most train stations are such zones, but most of the city centers of the bigger cities are, too (let that sink in - there a whole city center where police, without any cause, can search you and your belongings!)
Oh, not carrying ID (anywhere)? €90 fine, and you can be taken into custody until you have proven your identity. No cause necessary for asking for it, either.
Invading has never been a strategy generally employed here, the Dutch are merchants, war is bad for business (I'm sure there's a fitting Ferengi quote here...) Plus a country the size of a flyspeck on a global map just doesn't generally have the muscle.
Look, I still love my country, and for all its flaws it's still the best place on earth to live for me - but let's not kid ourselves, the surveillance state is alive and kicking here, and the 'OMG the terrorists are coming' sentiment is, too.
Not quite 'papieren, bitte' yet, and not as dramatic as I made it sound, but still not what one would expect in a land claiming to value freedom. (my other points still stand though, including those about the 'no cause search' zones)
Rule of Acquisition 34: War is good for business. Rule of Acquisition 35: Peace is good for business.
And that whole Dutch East Indies and Indonesia thing still has some repercussions till this day.
Schiphol is organised better than most comparable airports, and it has improved dramatically in the last 5 years, but the level of actual harassment can still be quite high (seems to vary by day).
Schiphol was not that bad the few times I've used it (last three weeks ago), IIRC they do the actual scan at gates which I think is always the superior option.
Completely agree on the EU/US comparison, of course. You can actually see how European aviation has now fully caught up and often surpassed its US counterpart -- US infrastructure looks old and creaky, often not fit for purpose, and thanks to TSA it now feels more like a series of gulags than a 3rd-millennium transportation network.
All outbound travel to the US has to go through the porno scanners, each and every time I have flown to the US I have opted out, just like I have opted out each time I get asked to go through the porno scanner in the US...
They don't make a fuss about it either, they just ask you to stand with your legs spread wide and arms spread and do a pat down/magnetic wand.
Not as bad as the US where you get put into a sort of metal "hot box" where you are told to wait till they can find someone with a low enough IQ to grope you, followed by the question if you really want to opt-out, and the agent doing everything in his power to make it as uncomfortable for the person they are checking as possible. Only that tends to backfire on them, cause most of those idiots are giant homophobes... so playing with them while getting groped is kinda fun.