History lesson - WOW!
I recently received a forward entitled "History lesson - WOW!" which purports to quiz the reader about various more-or-less recent terrorist acts, all commmitted by "d. Muslim male extremist between the ages of 17 and 40 ." This evidence is used to support racial/ethnic profiling as a counterterrorism tool. The piece must be making the rounds right now, because it's widely available on the web; here's one dolt's unthinking use of it.
Read it and see for yourself, but the piece is utterly misguided. The poor reasoning in this unhistorical mix-and-match exercise mirrors the poor reasoning in Washington, and it does nothing to "support our troops" (whatever that slogan might mean), and in fact only makes it harder to fight actual terrorists - i.e., adherents of bin Laden, as versus Muslim men between 17 and 40 - by making it harder for us to think about what the next threats are, and what shape they'll take. And don't even think about the damage done by racial/ethnic profiling to our universal Constitutional rights.
Of course, there are numerous specific criticisms to level, too:
1. The screenings performed now would not have stopped the 9/11 hijackers: they weren't armed, most of them didn't appear on any watch lists, and they seemed at the time like perfectly ordinary travelers - just like the next suicide bombers will seem perfectly ordinary at the time.
2. It's well known that al-Qaeda is trying to use non-Arabs for its missions now, given the misguided "racial profiling" of Arab men. The Department of Homeland Security will focus its attention there, and then some young Indonesian woman or Nigerian kid will detonate a bomb in a bus.
3. How many of the events listed in the "lesson" occurred in the U.S., or even in a place where American law enforcement could have prevented the attacks? By my count, two: the 9/11 attacks and the first WTC bombing. Racial profiling wouldn't have prevented any of them - not that you could have done it in, say, Lebanon in 1983, where everybody who wasn't a Muslim extremist was a Christian extremist.
4. The Libyan secret agents who bombed TWA 103 were acting on their government's behalf, not that of a worldwide Islamic conspiracy. Apples are not oranges.
5. Sirhan Sirhan a Muslim extremist a la Mohammed Atta? Ridiculous. Why not profile right-wing Christians then, since one of them blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahama City? Mentally-disturbed communists, since one of them killed JFK? The mentally distubed, since one of them almost killed Reagan? Hell, how about southern actors, since one of them killed Lincoln, or Slav anarchists, since one of them killed McKinley?
Read it and see for yourself, but the piece is utterly misguided. The poor reasoning in this unhistorical mix-and-match exercise mirrors the poor reasoning in Washington, and it does nothing to "support our troops" (whatever that slogan might mean), and in fact only makes it harder to fight actual terrorists - i.e., adherents of bin Laden, as versus Muslim men between 17 and 40 - by making it harder for us to think about what the next threats are, and what shape they'll take. And don't even think about the damage done by racial/ethnic profiling to our universal Constitutional rights.
Of course, there are numerous specific criticisms to level, too:
1. The screenings performed now would not have stopped the 9/11 hijackers: they weren't armed, most of them didn't appear on any watch lists, and they seemed at the time like perfectly ordinary travelers - just like the next suicide bombers will seem perfectly ordinary at the time.
2. It's well known that al-Qaeda is trying to use non-Arabs for its missions now, given the misguided "racial profiling" of Arab men. The Department of Homeland Security will focus its attention there, and then some young Indonesian woman or Nigerian kid will detonate a bomb in a bus.
3. How many of the events listed in the "lesson" occurred in the U.S., or even in a place where American law enforcement could have prevented the attacks? By my count, two: the 9/11 attacks and the first WTC bombing. Racial profiling wouldn't have prevented any of them - not that you could have done it in, say, Lebanon in 1983, where everybody who wasn't a Muslim extremist was a Christian extremist.
4. The Libyan secret agents who bombed TWA 103 were acting on their government's behalf, not that of a worldwide Islamic conspiracy. Apples are not oranges.
5. Sirhan Sirhan a Muslim extremist a la Mohammed Atta? Ridiculous. Why not profile right-wing Christians then, since one of them blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahama City? Mentally-disturbed communists, since one of them killed JFK? The mentally distubed, since one of them almost killed Reagan? Hell, how about southern actors, since one of them killed Lincoln, or Slav anarchists, since one of them killed McKinley?
posted by Christopher Tassava at Friday, January 21, 2005
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