Question: what do the 9/11 killers, the Shoebomber, the Heathrow plotters, the Pantybomber, the London Tube bombers, the doctors who drove a flaming SUV through the concourse of Glasgow Airport and the would-be killers of Danish cartoonists all have in common?
Answer: they’re Muslim. Sometimes they’re Muslims with box cutters, sometimes they’re Muslims with flaming shoes, sometimes they’re Muslims with liquids and gels, sometimes they’re Muslims with fully loaded underwear. But the Muslim bit is a constant. What we used to call a fact. But America’s leaders cannot state that simple fact, and so the TSA is obliged to pretend that all seven billion inhabitants of this planet represent an equal threat. (From Steyn in Mcleans)
Many calls now for some form of profiling. I say in the letter below they published on the 15th Jan, that the calls for some form of passenger profiling are bipartisan calls now, though for the moment I can't quickly find a Democratic example of that. There's Steyn above, his usual sharp, acerbic self, in the whole article here. And there's Charles Moore in recent Spectator, which I'll look for. Meantime, my comment in the letter below, to the South China Morning Post. I hope that readers can come on board on this one -- recognising that by not profiling passengers we're making more work for less result, so that we're less secure, not more. And that profiling is perfectly valid and not racist.
Charles Moore points out that the safest airport in the world is the one that has faced the greatest threats over many decades: Tel Aviv. There they have trained security officers who look for signs in profiled passengers and if any are suspicious, they interview them in depth. None of this equal-opportunity frisking nonsense.
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In the wake of the failed Christmas aeroplane bombing over Detroit, two strange arguments are being made. The first is that the bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was not radicalised by his experiences in Islamic student societies where extremists sometimes spoke, while at University College London, which he left only last year. He trained as a terrorist in Yemen, so the British context is said to be irrelevant.
But surely no such absolute disjunction exists between violent radicalisation and the ideas which legitimise it. Many paedophiles go to Thailand to get child prostitutes: it does not follow that their reading, associates and internet use over here are irrelevant to what they end up doing. The second peculiar argument is that the ‘profiling’ of terrorists is counterproductive and will create a justified grievance.
Contrary to what is said, profiling does not mean, for example, interrogating every Muslim. It means, rather, that the authorities work out risk rationally and concentrate hard on applying their knowledge. There is nothing righteous about the ‘equal’ treatment of all passengers. It is just an insulting waste of time and money.
I know of a recent case of a 94-year-old Jewish refugee from the Nazis who worked for the US government for half a century. Because a metal pin in his leg set off an alarm at an American airport, he was forced to undergo an anal investigation. Visitors to Israel, the country in the world under the greatest threat of suicide bombing, will know that no such madness applies there. Airport searches are carefully targeted: skilled people ask passengers detailed questions.
