SWA/FO said:
You guys going to start picking on the French next?
The French may be, generally speaking, a bunch of uncooperative pricks, but they don't generally go around trying to blow up anybody who isn't a Muslim.
Just suppose two aircraft crash on the same day, both chartered jets, both near major U.S. landmarks, one with an all French crew and one with, say, an all Saudi Arabian crew. (Remember, most--if not all--of the September 11th hijackers were Saudi nationals.) Doesn't the Saudi crew deserve to at least have their background checks freshened up a bit by the FBI*? I'm not saying lock 'em up and work 'em over...just try to make sure they haven't spent time in an Al Quaeda training camp lately! Again, it's not racism, it's not even profiling. It's
pattern recognition.
Here, think of it this way: a certain FBO has a loaner car, but every time they let an airline flight crew use it, it comes back trashed and out of gas. (Panama City, FL comes to mind...) Now here I come, an upstanding citizen who will treat their car with respect, but they won't give it to me. Why? Because they recognized a
pattern: "every airline crew we loan the car to destroys it. So, let's stop loaning it to airline crews."
"Profiling" follows the same logic: Middle Eastern males aged 18 to 50 have carried out a statistically significant number of attacks aimed at Americans. Therefore, anyone in that demographic should be subject to more scrutiny than the rest of us. Right?
* I should note that, based on my past experiences, the FBI is totally incompetent...but they
have proven they can identify terrorists after the fact.