Arab Hijackers Now Eligible to Pre-board

[lurker]

Re: $0.02....

I realize that across our land we believe in "innocent until proven guilty, etc." However, I find it odd that everytime I hear about a train station being bombed, an embassy being leveled or a cache of fertilizer and chemicals turning up in a residential apartment, it turns out to be radical middle eastern/north african Muslims. No two ways about it. It is not the radical blond haired, blue eyed Scandinavians, nor the pale Canadians, or the funny talking Australians.

Common sense tells me to keep my eye on these guys and be suspect of their actions. Spades are spades. Let's have the stones to say so.

EB

The problem isn't so much saying all terrorists are Middle-Eastern, it's saying all Middle-Easterners are terrorists.

It's a slippery slope. If we start racial profiling now, then what's next?

It could be said that everybody that bombed Pearl Harbor was Japanese, so we were justified in "keeping an eye" on all Japanese-Americans. We all know (hopefully) what happened next. I'm not suggesting that the government is going to start illegally taking land and putting individuals into internment camps, just that we have to be careful about overlooking constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans.

Benjamin Franklin's quote is probably pretty trite by now, but it's one that I believe...

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

 

[Bandit60]

"If we start racial profiling now, then what's next?"

I'll tell you:

If someone started to racial profile me, and caused me a bunch of heartache maybe I would go to those of my race and tell them to stop doing what they are doing to cause this. Its about time we made them mad at each other instead of being mad at us.

But if they get mad at us, at least we still are alive to see them mad as opposed to being dead from not profiling.

 

[Emerson Bigguns]

lurker - I agree. Not all middle-easterners or Muslims are terrorists. However are you ready to accept the consequences for inaction. What is your acceptible limit of damage before you begin to say that we must accept racial-profiling or other measures to ensure our safety.

Would 50,000 dead at 9/11 made a difference in people's views? What if a nuke goes off in the mainland? Does Ben Franklin's meaning of "temporary safety" change in such a case. In my opinion, that day is coming.

I would rather act now than to wait and have to tell the nay-sayers "I told you so."

 

[lurker]

lurker - I agree. Not all middle-easterners or Muslims are terrorists. However are you ready to accept the consequences for inaction. What is your acceptible limit of damage before you begin to say that we must accept racial-profiling or other measures to ensure our safety.

Would 50,000 dead at 9/11 made a difference in people's views? What if a nuke goes off in the mainland? Does Ben Franklin's meaning of "temporary safety" change in such a case. In my opinion, that day is coming.

I would rather act now than to wait and have to tell the nay-sayers "I told you so."

I'm not suggesting inaction. Perhaps just a more analytical approach to screening than making sweeping racist generalizations. I would like to hope that we're getting better at profiling potential terrorists without having to discriminate against an entire race.

I agree, much of the alleged profiling the TSA does now is nonsense, and largely for the sole appearance of safety. I know danm near every time I go through the airport I get the body cavity search because I almost invariably fit one or more of their criteria. However, I'd like to hope that it's moving in the right direction.

As somebody previously posted, racial profiling would not have stopped 9/11. They manipulated flaws in the system.

Incidentally, I find it very interesting that the same people on this board who frequently pound their chests about how this is the greatest danmed country on earth, and how everybody in the free world owes their liberty to the US of A, yada yada yada are the first people in line for racial profiling. It's like they don't get the fact that the reason that this country is great is because we don't (generally) make it policy to discriminate. Am I the only one seeing the irony? I'm talking a little out of my ass with what follows, but if you want racial profiling, I'm betting there's plenty in Iran, Pakistan, Russia, etc.

Anyway, I recognize I'm being a little idealistic, and that it's not a perfect world, but I'd like to hope that we don't have to stoop to discrimination to fix our security problems.