| The writer is not a moonbat. I'm leaving the title as is, but repeat, the writer is not a moonbat. |
IN THE WAKE of last week's London terrorist-plot arrests, some Americans are calling on the U.S. government to apply racial profiling to airport screening. Their argument goes something like this: Why should the federal Transportation Security Authority search little old white ladies when young Arab and Muslim men were behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and other terrorist plots?
The answer is: The feds should avoid racial profiling because it breeds discontent without enhancing security.
Tell that to the Brits ...I think they might differ with you
| I actually agree to an extent: strict profiling, particularly when done by martinets with an eye towards deliberating casting suspicion and demeaning an entire population of people, does indeed breed resentment. Profiling can and should be done: it should be done as quietly as possible. When brought out into the open it should be handled with regret and an apology, and then it should continue as quietly as possible. |
Strict profiling can't work as it will prompt terrorist cells to recruit outside the profile. They already are. The London suspects include the English son of a conservative politician, a convert to Islam, as well as a young mother and father whom authorities believe planned to bring their six-month-old baby on their target plane.
Oh my God...talk about Cognative Dissonance!
The lack of cognition by the writer isn't about profiling, it's about why a son of a conservative Brit politican converts to Islam in the first place. Britain has become, like many Euro countries, a cultural and moral abyss. It doesn't stand for very much anymore. The Anglican Church has become a Druid coven, its religious leaders have forgotten the Bible, its political leaders have become completely tranzi and socialist, and society in general has become, in a number of ways, despairing and living only for the moment. We've seen that in a number of ways.
Now along comes a strong, virile religion that makes no excuses -- do it our way and you'll end up in paradise. See the attraction? That lad did, and others are also converting. That's where the need for understanding and cognition comes. Why isn't this happening in the U.S.? Because, at least for now, we still stand for something. |
In 1986, British authorities stopped a pregnant Irish woman whose Palestinian boyfriend packed her off with a bomb as he flew her to Tel Aviv, ostensibly to meet his family. Don't forget the very white Timothy McVeigh, of Oklahoma City bombing fame. Follow the profile at your own risk.
OK..so since a few don't fit the profile it's stupid? Obviously never took a statistics and probability course
| Young Irish Mary was basically a little slow and naïve in trusting men, specifically a Paleo man. The writer is confusing young, stoopid love with profiling. |
Nico Melendez of the Department of Homeland Security told me that his agency is "100 percent" opposed to racial profiling because behavior is a better indicator of a threat than race or religion. What kind of behavior? The twitching of the eyes was an example. One advantage, according to Melendez: "The more a person tries to stop that, the more it happens."
Dear God..let's look at the race and religion of all the boomers caught...umm...see a pattern?
| Race and religion alone don't help. Race/religion + behavior -- now you're getting somewhere. Screening all passengers on an airplane, whether by 'behavior' or with wands and X-ray machines, has a very low hit rate. That and a high hassle factor causes resentment and laxity. Sharpen the tool by quiet, discrete profiling + behavior + screening, and now you've got something you can use. |
As to complaints that seniors and children are searched needlessly, Melendez cited the 67-year-old man who hid a 9-inch knife in his prosthetic leg and the 10-year-old boy who unwittingly brought a teddy bear with a loaded gun -- a gift -- to the airport. Although, I should note, Melendez failed to establish that these weapons would have been used in an attack.
| Do you want to fly in an airplane where that gun might have been used? |
Of course, I think some security practices are overkill. I miss metal knives with airline meals, although Melendez tells me the government only bans serrated metal knives. Still, I don't complain -- much anyway -- because if a plane plot ever succeeds, I know that the same people who have been grousing about niggling security regulations will stomp all over the TSA for not doing everything possible to prevent an attack.
When people complain about the granny searches, I want to say to them: Get over it. Learn the difference between a nuisance and a hardship.
| A ray of sanity, but the author then throws it all away ... |
Law professor John Banzhaf of George Washington University Law School sent out an e-mail Tuesday that argued that racial profiling was constitutional because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that colleges could consider race for admissions because there was a "compelling state interest."
| That doesn't mean that racial profiling is constitutional, it means that for the purposes of remedying past discrimination, colleges could use race as one factor in admissions. If you're going to quote the law, know the law. |
Then again, many conservatives -- I'm one -- oppose racial profiling for college admissions because it practices invidious discrimination. Or as Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, a Christian Lebanese American, noted, "The national interest is in treating people like human beings and not differentiating them unless absolutely positively necessary."
Like me, Issa sees times when authorities might focus on an ethnic group or other profile -- such as, soon after intelligence points to a certain group. But Issa added, "The difference between a lead and racial profiling is the difference between police work and group punishment." Profiling could poison an entire generation of American Arabs and Muslims.
or kill an entire generation of Americans if you don't
And: "Why take millions of people who would be described as Arabs or Muslims for purposes of profiling and suddenly cause them to have a reason to doubt what's special about America?"
Because they, like the rest of us, like to live -- most of them anyways. That's why profiling has to be done quietly -- we don't want to alienate these citizens, we want them on our side. We want them to call the police and tip us when cousin Mahmoud starts gibbering foolishly about blowing stuff up. We want them to tell us when someone at the mosque starts collecting for the Paleostinian Widows Ammunition Fund.
In short, we want them to behave like Americans. That means we have to treat them like Americans. Profiling must be done quietly -- oh, sorry, didn't mean to imply you're disloyal, thank you for your understanding, have a nice flight. And make it clear to all that if tall, pear-shaped Scots-Irish male Catholic Americans were setting off bombs and crashing planes into office towers, people like me would be profiled. |
Unlike the United Kingdom, the United States has not had a terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001. This country must be doing something right. Why go down the road of racial profiling when it likely will create new enemies without stopping old enemies?
Idiot....
| No, not an idiot, just not quite there in her thinking. |
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