...consider New York’s new policy of having the cops search the bags of passengers on New York subways. No one is shocked that the New York Civil Liberties Union is aghast. They say it’s an infringement of people’s constitutional rights and will do nothing to prevent terrorism. Well, I suppose it is a very low-level infraction, on the order of the tyranny of airport searches. But somehow most people still think they live in a free country when they fly to Tampa.It’s flatly batty, however, to argue that such searches will do nothing to prevent terrorism. Sure, it may not do enough, but it will surely do something. Presumably young Pakistani or Arab terrorist men will have a slightly more difficult time carrying backpacks full of bombs, nails, and broken glass into the subway, and blowing them(selves) up at the moment of maximum damage.
Which brings us to complaints over racial profiling. Man, this is getting old. Look, outside of Israel and Russia, the number of female suicide bombers is close to zero. Should 50 percent of the scrutiny fall on women? The number of non-Muslim suicide bombers is even closer to zero. So why should police search the handbag of a Norwegian granny holding hands with her granddaughter? To round out the diversity of the statistics?
Many say this will “do nothing to stop another Tim McVeigh.” This is so cheap. After all, the people arguing that profiling won’t catch the McVeighs of the world aren’t in favor of searches at all. It’s not like their preferred policy is more likely to catch white terrorists. It’s just that their preferred policy is less likely to catch non-white terrorists. The upshot of their position is that it’s somehow unfair that, in a generally more secure environment, white Christian terrorists would have a slight advantage over non-white Muslim ones. Yet nobody says the police are duty-bound to search only South Asians, Muslims, and men. If that shifty-eyed Norwegian granny’s hand-bag has wires coming out of it, I say, “Swarm!”
Goldberg may well have been reacting to this Washington Post column by Colbert King, which cites McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, and even the Wichita "BTK" serial killer in his search for white evildoers to make his argument that profiling is insulting, offensive and racist. King is certainly right that it would be problematic to enact a search or inspection policy that would focus efforts predominantly on dark-skinned, young males. I'm sure that there would be what King calls "push-back", but I doubt that it would be "unlike any seen in this country in many years."
Because just as insulting to all those innocent dark-skinned males who would be momentarily inconvenienced by an inspector or security guard is the suggestion that they wouldn't understand that they were singled out because in some way they physically resemble the people who have been blowing up innocent civilians, or the suggestion that they wouldn't handle the inconvenience with the same grace and resignation that have characterized the attitudes of most all Americans since 9/11.
It's as insulting as the suggestion that innocent Americans who happen to be of Middle Eastern origin aren't aware that 99% of Islamist terrorism is carried out by Muslims of Middle Eastern or North African origin. You'd think these innocent Americans would be interested in seeing our country's finite security resources and capabilities used intelligently and to their best effect, just like every other innocent American is. And if that means that they are more likely than the next guy to be asked to open their coat at a subway turnstile, somehow I think they'll get it.
I don't know if I'm asking or expecting too much of people who may be insulted at being singled out for search or inspection because of their race or ethnicity, or because of their accent or their mode of dress, and I certainly don't have an answer for them other than to point out that this is where Islamist terror has brought us as a society.
I will be searched at the entrance to Browns Stadium in a couple of weeks, and I will be delayed and inconvenienced as a result of the process. But I get it. And in fact it makes me feel better about being there. And I'm not suggesting that they abandon that practice and start inspecting only dark-skinned young males. But the opponents of focusing our security efforts on those people who are more likely be a threat to public safety based on known facts, logic and history can't deny that their presumed preference, a policy of random selection searches, is a waste of public resources at a time when we can least afford it.
I think King is right to reject on its face a policy that would use blackness as a component of any proposed Islamist terror "profile" in the United States. We've come way too far in race relations in this country to sit still for that. Britains of North African origin were involved in London's 7/7 attacks, but I don't think there is any connection between blacks and Islamist terror in the minds of the American public. Still I'm guessing that's one reason we're seeing King's concern now instead of two months or two years ago. And I'm not suggesting his concern is misplaced even if I think it might be exaggerated.
So do we simply accept the politically correct nonsense that we must search Jonah's Norwegian grannies at the airport in order to squash the possibility of offending anyone's sensibilities, and persist in the absurd fiction that every fifth person in line has an equal likelihood of being a suicide bomber, regardless of the costs of that policy? As long as we have politicians making policy, it looks like we do.
It's as silly and wasteful as spending as much Homeland Security money on states like Alaska and Wyoming as we do on more populated and strategically important areas just because they happen to have as many Senators as New York does, and because the appetite for pork is no less ravenous in states where the tumbleweed outnumber the people. So we waste millions of dollars on remote localities where, as Rich Lowry says, the people "don't have the foggiest idea what to do with the money."
Which of course is no sillier than trashing the expression "War on Terror" in favor of "Struggle Against Violent Extremism" as the official government line. We're at war, but we can't say we're at war because some people get upset with the word "war". We're fighting mostly disaffected young, male, Wahhabist Muslims, mostly from the Middle East, but we can't admit that either, so we pretend to suspect everyone, or no one.
We're kidding ourselves.
Posted by dan at August 1, 2005 03:09 PM