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Topic: Political Correctness in US security-A Joke

topic by barb 3/14/2002 (22:29)

reply top Essay The Case for Profiling Why random searches of airline travelers are a useless charade BY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER CHRIS O'MEARA/AP A Florida National Guardsman looks on as a security agent checks passengers Monday, Mar. 18, 2002 The latest airport-security scandal is the groping of female flight attendants and passengers during patdowns. Not to worry. The Transportation Security Administration chief is right on it. 'We're going to fix that right away,' he said recently, announcing the appointment of an ombudsman. A nice bureaucratic Band-Aid. No one, however, asks the obvious question: Why are we patting down flight attendants in the first place? Why, for that matter, are we conducting body searches of any female passengers? Random passenger checks at airports are completely useless. We've all been there in the waiting lounge, rolling our eyes in disbelief as the 80-year-old Irish nun, the Hispanic mother of two, the Japanese-American businessman, the House committee chairman with the titanium hip are randomly chosen and subjected to head-to-toe searching for...what? Not for security--these people are hardly candidates for suicide terrorism--but for political correctness. We are engaged in a daily and ostentatious rehearsal of the officially sanctioned proposition that suicide terrorists come from anywhere, without regard to gender, ethnicity, age or religious affiliation. LATEST COVER STORY Deadly Mission Mar. 18, 2002 Past Issues Can 911 Happen Again? Mar. 11, 2002 ----------------- Bono's Mission Mar. 4, 2002 ----------------- Good As Gold Feb. 25, 2002 ----------------- Breast Cancer Feb. 18, 2002 ----------------- Olympic Preview Feb. 11, 2002 ----------------- The Enron Mess Feb. 4, 2002 ----------------- Your On Your Own Jan. 28, 2002 ----------------- Staying Healthy Jan. 21, 2002 ----------------- Apple's New Core Jan. 14, 2002 ----------------- Person of the Year Jan. 7, 2002 TIME IN-DEPTH Behind the Enron Scandal The Race for Oscar PHOTO ESSAYS Inside CENTCOM Pictures of the Week Top Oscar Nominees More Photos >>> INTERACTIVE GRAPHICS Operation Anaconda: A Guide Breast Cancer: New Treatments MORE STORIES Israel: Streets Red With Blood Show Biz: News They Can't Use More Stories >>> CNN.com: Breaking news That is not true, and we know it. Random searches are a ridiculous charade, a charade that not only gives a false sense of security but, in fact, diminishes security because it wastes so much time and effort on people who are obviously no threat. Everyone now has his nail-clipper, tweezers or X-rayed-shoe story. Can-you-top-this tales of luggage and body searches have become a staple of cocktail chatter. Yet citizens would willingly subject themselves to delay, inconvenience and even indignity if they felt what they were undergoing was actually improving airport security. Since Sept. 11, subjecting oneself to security indignities has been a civic duty. But this has become a parody of civic duty. Random searches are being done purely to defend against the charge of racial profiling. Imagine that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols had not been acting alone but had instead been part of a vast right-wing, antigovernment, terrorist militia with an ideology, a network and a commitment to carrying out attacks throughout America. Would there have been any objection to singling out young white men for special scrutiny at airports and other public places? Of course not. And if instead, in response to the threat posed by the McVeigh Underground, airport security began pulling young black men or elderly Asian women out of airport lines for full-body searches, would we not all loudly say that this is an outrage and an absurdity? As it happens, the suicide bombers who attacked us on Sept. 11 were not McVeigh Underground. They were al-Qaeda: young, Islamic, Arab and male. That is not a stereotype. That is a fact. And there is no hiding from it, as there is no hiding from the next al-Qaeda suicide bomber. He has to be found and stopped. And you don't find him by strip searching female flight attendants or 80-year-old Irish nuns. This is not to say your plane could not be brought down by a suicide bomber of another sort. It could. It could also be brought down by a meteorite. Or by a Stinger missile fired by Vermont dairymen in armed rebellion. These are all possible. But because they are rather improbable, we do not alter our daily lives to defend against the possibility. True, shoe bomber Richard Reid, while young and Islamic and male, was not Arab. No system will catch everyone. But our current system is designed to catch no one because we are spending 90% of our time scrutinizing people everyone knows are no threat. Jesse Jackson once famously lamented how he felt when he would 'walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery--then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.' Jackson is no racist. He was not passing judgment on his own ethnicity. He was simply reacting to probabilities. He would rather not. We all would rather not make any calculations based on ethnicity, religion, gender or physical characteristics--except that on airplanes our lives are at stake. The pool of suicide bombers is not large. To pretend that it is universal is absurd. Airport security is not permitted to 'racially' profile, but every passenger--white or black, male or female, Muslim or Christian--does. We scan the waiting room, scrutinizing other passengers not just for nervousness and shiftiness but also for the demographic characteristics of al-Qaeda. We do it privately. We do it quietly. But we do it. Airport officials, however, may not. This is crazy. So crazy that it is only a matter of time before the public finally demands that our first priority be real security, not political appearances--and puts an end to this charade.

reply by John Calvin 3/15/2002 (8:13)

reply top 'it is only a matter of time before the public finally demands that our first priority be real security' Sorry, it's going to be a long time before Americans 'demand' policies and actions which provide real security. That would entail a complete reversal of our present course, like dropping 'Infinate Justice Crusade- Enduring Freedom' like a hot potato. Meanwhile the U.S. government is doing everything in its power to enhance 'Al Queda's' mission of terror. statfor.com 'The Al Queda Doctrine': 'Al Qaeda's first goal is to survive -- or, at the very least, appear to survive. This is vital because of the group's larger goal: Al Qaeda wants to create an Islamic confrontation with the United States. There is a deep pool of people in the Islamic world that share both the vision of a multi-national Islamic state and the vision of the United States as the chief antagonist to Islam. Activating this pool of support is difficult, however, largely because a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness pervades the Islamic world. This sense does not, as many argue, lead only to violent outbursts. It also leads to a deep passivity based on the view that the United States is overwhelmingly powerful and on the perceptions that it is both impervious to Islamic blows and capable of annihilating opposition. The attacks of Sept. 11 were designed to dispel the first perception by demonstrating that it was possible for al Qaeda to strike directly at the heart of the United States. It is now necessary for al Qaeda to dispel the second perception by showing it can survive a U.S. counterattack. Therefore, mere survival can constitute an important victory for al Qaeda. One would assume that the only way for al Qaeda to demonstrate its continued existence would be to strike the United States again. The six-month hiatus in attacks could be construed as a sign that al Qaeda has either ceased to exist or has been so thoroughly disrupted that it is no longer a fighting force. For this reason, it would seem imperative for al Qaeda to strike again. In fact, it would have seemed imperative for the group to have struck months ago, or else to be declared defunct by its own lack of action. Paradoxically, the United States has saved al Qaeda from needing to take action. Since Sept. 11, the United States consistently has argued that al Qaeda remains a potent and dangerous fighting force, that it has cells operating in about 60 countries and that a substantial number of al Qaeda operatives were already pre-deployed in the United States. Constant alerts by the U.S. government during the past six months have been based upon credible information regarding the threat of another al Qaeda strike. At various points, U.S. officials extended the threat by publicly ruminating about the possibility that al Qaeda has secured weapons of mass destruction and the potential danger that those weapons would be used in the United States. In short, al Qaeda did not have to demonstrate its survival -- to either the American public or the more important Islamic audience -- because Washington constantly affirmed its survival through threat warnings. So long as U.S. President George W. Bush and others continue to proclaim their obsession with and fear of al Qaeda, their comments will be widely disseminated in the Islamic realm and will be interpreted as signs of al Qaeda's continued existence and success...al Qaeda is generating precisely the sort of response of which its leaders could only have dreamt. The defeat of al Qaeda is the single overriding consideration of U.S. foreign policy. Indeed, it is so important that Washington is prepared to redefine its entire alliance system if those allies hinder the prosecution of the war. The United States has gone so far not only as to very publicly change its nuclear strategy but also to designate Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iran -- all Islamic nations -- as potential targets of nuclear attack. This is precisely what al Qaeda has been hoping would happen. The group will have made its case if it can force the United States into both a monomaniacal focus on al Qaeda as well as into a general confrontation with the Islamic world -- especially a confrontation that might include nuclear weapons. If it can demonstrate that the United States is the undiscriminating enemy of the entire Muslim world, the possibility of generating a major upheaval in the Islamic realm -- one that would place al Qaeda's ideology as the centerpiece of the new Islamic order -- would become very real.' ........................ Among the various absurdities going on in my State: The governor spent $300,000 installing bullet proof windows in his State House Office. National Guard Armories ( which don't hold many weapons)- long used recreationally by a host of youth groups- were closed to the public. A 15 foot security fence was installed around the perimeter of the Health Department (terrorists are expected to climb on the roof and access 'sensitive' biological materials stored inside)..to the ruination of public gardens located nearby. Barriers were installed in front of the Capital building to prevent truck bombers attacking the Legislature while in session. Police officers from our largest City were reassigned to the Airport ( at property tax payers expense), despite chronic shortages of patrol officers and at an annual cost of more than $200,000). National Guard units have been assigned to assist the Border Patrol, but Senators and Congressman are outraged that they will not be allowed to carry their M-16, which would leave them vulnerable when Al Queda attacks America accross the Canadian Border. Meanwhile the State is cutting State Funding for education across the Board. A medical insurance program for the poor is being drastically cut. Highway and Capital Improvement spending plans ( including desperately need bridge repairs) are postponed. Spending on environmental clean-up must be slashed. Never-the-less, taxes ( income, property and fees) will all be raised. It may be a great relief for some, however, that the present obsession with security has definately pushed all the talk about equal rights and opportunities for minorities and women, universal health care, decent jobs, better wages and improved working conditions to the back page.A great relief that now we have certain groups among us we can be suspicious of and discriminate against on the basis of 'common sense' and the 'public good'.