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The Department of Homeland Security got all bumfuzzled in the wake of Mr. Abdulmutallab's attempt to set off a underpants-bomb to bring down Northwest flight 253. Quick as a flash, they ginned up rules forbidding passengers from using pillows or blankets during the final part of the flight, and locked them out of the rest rooms as well.
That's silly - if someone managed to sneak a bomb onto an airplane, how would denying everyone a blanket make it less likely that the bomb would go off? There's no need for a perpetrator to wait until near the end of the flight - setting the bomb off over water would make the investigation much more difficult. One can't help but agree with the Economist's take:
In the wake of Friday's attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, the people who run America's airport security apparatus appear to have gone insane. [emphasis added]
Just as we were wondering if our government was determined to continue laying on more and more nuttiness forever, a ray of sunshine broke through the fog of bureaucratic stupidity. At long last, and not before time, we hear that the security system is going to start paying attention to where passengers originate and examine them accordingly! The New York Times reports:
Citizens of 14 nations, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, who are flying to the United States will be subjected indefinitely to the intense screening at airports worldwide that was imposed after the Christmas Day bombing plot, Obama administration officials announced Sunday.
As Reuters put it, "Nearly all of those are Muslim countries." Imagine that: focusing scrutiny on people who're most likely to be hostile! What an intellectual breakthrough!
Most of the 9-11 bombers were Saudi citizens, but rather than take advantage of that knowledge, our government, in a misguided effort to avoid offense, has treated everybody from the most furtive Muhammad to your 90-year-old granny more or less the same, and with more or less the same ineffectual but infuriatingly nonsensical results.
The forces of political correctness aren't lying down, of course; they're protesting this common-sense measure:
The change represents an easing of the immediate response to the attempted bombing of a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit that had been in place the past week. But the restrictions remain tougher than the rules that were in effect before the Dec. 25 incident. And the action on Sunday further establishes a global security system that treats people differently based on what country they are from, evoking protests from civil rights groups. [emphasis added]
One of the most basic rules of law enforcement is to focus anti-crime efforts in areas where crimes are most likely to be committed. This insight is the basis of law enforcement agencies keeping detailed track of where and when crimes occur so that they can station the most officers at the times and places they'll most likely trip over a crime. One doesn't post the drug squad at Tiffany's, nor the vice squad at the Knitted Doily Museum.
Similarly, knowing that they can't investigate everybody, savvy police focus their investigations on people who're most likely to have committed the crime. This strategy was immortalized in the famous line, "Round up the usual suspects," but there's a lot of truth in it. If you look at police records, you'll see the same names popping up time and time again.
It's a well-known fact that black people are more likely to commit violent crimes than white people - FBI statistics bear this out over the years. Thus, it makes sense for law enforcement to use a certain amount of racial profiling when investigating such crimes.
This obvious but profoundly unfortunate fact of life has predictably led to "civil rights" protests in the United States. Using the common-sense technique of profiling by national origin is no different:
Nawar Shora, the legal director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, says the rule wrongly implies that all citizens of certain nations are suspect.
"I understand there needs to be additional security in light of what was attempted on Christmas Day," Mr. Shora said, adding that he intended to file a formal protest on Monday. "But this is extreme and very dangerous. All of a sudden people are labeled as being related to terrorism just because of the nation they are from."
Mr. Shora understands the situation precisely. As long as ordinary citizens in Islamic countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the other nations on the government's list accept terrorism by their fellow nationals without protest, they, too, will be suspect.
We all know exactly who the enemy is, and our government finally seems to be admitting what we all know. What's more, the enemy knows who they are, as do all people who have occasion to be close to them. Dr. Abdelrahman al-Rashid, managing director of al-Arabiya satellite TV, put it very plainly:
It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.
Dr. al-Rashid also said, "We [Muslims] cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise." What should be obvious bears repeating: These statements have been attacked as politically incorrect, which of course they are. They can be ignored; they can be excused, but what he said can't be denied.
Not only are Dr. al-Rashid's statements true, they are so true as to be not merely stereotypes, but truisms.
If Mr. Shora desires that Arabs not be discriminated against, he'd be well advised to urge his fellow Arabs a) not to commit crimes that will get them discriminated against, b) try to talk people they know out of getting involved in terrorism, and c) tell the authorities about suspicious behavior - which, let it be said, Mr. Abdulmutallab's father did in fact do. It's not his fault that our "protectors" had their heads too firmly ensconced in their nether regions to do anything useful about the information he supplied.
Our government is trying to have it both ways, of course:
A homeland security official said that the Obama administration did not consider this move a step in the direction of racial profiling, which the Transportation Security Administration has said it has long tried to avoid.
If the forces of political correctness require that we call it "national profiling" instead of "racial profiling," so be it. That's actually more accurate: contrary to popular misconception, Islam is not a race. Richard Reid the shoe-bomber was snow-white, as was John Walker Lindh the American Taliban.
Really what we need is "religious profiling", but given that adherents of the particular religion at issue have a noted tendency to clump together, national profiling is certainly an excellent start.
Either way, it's about time that the TSA and its sister agencies concentrated their efforts on the specific sort of people we all know will be perpetrating the next act of terrorism and leave granny from Poughkeepsie alone.