Posted on 07/16/2004 6:28:10 PM PDT by quidnunc
What do you make of this story about 14 Syrian musicians whose in-flight bathroom use was more coordinated than a synchronized swimming routine? It sounds a lot like the kind of dry run James Woods witnessed and which I recounted in this excerpt from The Face Of The Tiger. The other point it seems to confirm is the sheer constraints under which an advanced western society can wage war in an age of political correctness. It’s not just the weediness of Norm Mineta but, as I note below, a broader unwillingness to speak the truth about who it is who’s trying to kill us. I don’t see why, for example, US Immigration would refuse entry to a harmless British novelist Ian McEwan on the grounds that the honorarium for his speech in California was too much – a law they invented on the spot, by the way – but wave through bands of Syrian musicians to tour the land. America barely has diplomatic relations with Syria. Is it really so necessary to maintain open access for Syrian “artists”?
When political correctness got going in the Eighties, the laconic wing of the conservative movement was inclined to be relaxed about it. To be sure, the tendency of previously pithy identity labels to become ever more polysyllabically ornate (“person of colour”, “Native American”) was time consuming, but otherwise PC was surely harmless. Some distinguished persons of non-colour, among them Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, even argued that conservatives should support political correctness as merely the contemporary version of old-fashioned courtliness and good manners.
Alas, after September 11th, this position seems no longer tenable. Instead, we have to ask a more basic question: Does political correctness kill?
Consider the extraordinary memo sent three weeks ago by FBI agent Coleen Rowley to the agency’s director Robert Mueller, and now all over Time magazine. Ms Rowley works out of the Minneapolis field office, whose agents, last August 16th, took action to jail a French citizen of Middle Eastern origin. Zacarias Moussaoui had shown up at a Minnesota flight school and shelled out 8,000 bucks in cash in order to learn how to fly 747s, except for the landing and take-off bit, which he said he’d rather skip. On investigation, he proved to have overstayed his visa and so was held on an immigration violation. Otherwise, he would have been the 20th hijacker, and, so far as one can tell, on board United Flight 93, the fourth plane, the one which crashed in a Pennsylvania field en route, as we now know, to the White House. In Mr Moussaoui’s more skilled hands – Flight 93 wound up with the runt of Osama’s litter — it might well have reached its target.
Ms Rowley and her colleagues established that Moussaoui was on a French intelligence watch list, had ties to radical Islamist groups, was known to have recruited young Muslims to fight in Chechnya, and had been in Afghanistan and Pakistan immediately before arriving in the US. They wanted to search his computer, but to do that they needed the okay from HQ. Washington was not only uncooperative, but set about, in the words of Ms Rowley’s memo, “thwarting the Minneapolis FBI agents’ efforts”, responding to field-office requests with ever lamer brush-offs: How could she be sure it was the same guy? There could be any number of Frenchmen called “Zacarias Moussaoui”. She checked the Paris phone book, which listed only one. After September 11th, when the Minneapolis agents belatedly got access to Moussaoui’s computer, they found among other things the phone number of Mohammed Atta’s roommate.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Steyn nails it.
"People have a right to call themselves whatever they want".
True. It seems to change rather suddenly though.I, like a previous poster stopped at black.I know older folks who stopped at colored. I want a new label, I'm bored with white, and cracker is an anachronism that applied to Georgians mainly
And that squeamishness hasn't stopped
Okay whatever but I was responding to another poster talking about what other people call themselves. I'm not being facetious. I don't get how people calling themselves african-american or native-american is getting a political upperhand.
hehehe well...how about American? That's simple ;-)
It's part of the grievance routine. For example "native american" was brought in to replace the "racist" term "Indian." It's not just a convenient noun. It's not even racial pride. It's an aggressive assertion of anger at the injustice represented by the previous term.
Any Hyphentated-American term is a chip on the shoulder, declaring that the people so named have a special status, separate from (and usually oppressed by) non-hyphenated Americans.
I don't think that an attack on the TSA staff is warranted, IMHO. They're doing a basically impossible job as best they can. As someone who flies regularly I have had many interactions with security staff over the years, and I understand that theirs is a job for which there are never good days, only bad days.
I was not in favor of the federalization of the TSA. I don't think it solved anything, but it's done, and I'm over it.
I wouldn't be a TSA employee for all the money in the world. They can keep the bad guys off the planes a thousand times and get no recognition for it, but only one failure will be all it takes to ruin them. Sorry... not interested. If you ask me... these folks are doing one of the MOST thankless jobs in the country. Thankless, especially here at FR. We're especially cruel in that department.
Yes, I think we should be profiling passengers for middle eastern males and giving them extra attention. Any stupid policies we have to the contrary are not the fault of the screener at the airport. But this doesn't mean that we should ignore other demographics entirely, including senior citizens.
If it were known that an elderly person or a baby in a carriage can breeze through security with no attention... then that's who they'll pick to carry the C-4.
Well... there you have it. Flame away.
I don't blame them either. It's like blaming regular teachers for the screw ups of the high vaunted NEA adminstration.
Well... it's not good to be in a perpetual state of anger. Of course 'American' would solve a lot of problems but in some people's minds being called 'african-american' means more to them than being called black. Oh well. Now I'm beginning to get confused *LOL*
As a "native American" (Cherokee, Irish and German), I simply consider myself to be an American. All these hyphenated flavors of American need to decide where their loyalties lie. If they're truly Americans, they'll drop the prefix. If not, then they need to move to the home of that prefix and get the hell out of our country.
Love or leave it. I agree.
Welcome to the club!
Holland is full of Moslems. Some are white.
You should travel to Israel. They search EVERYONE like that.
I guess it's all about assimilation. Any immigrants who are not willing to assimilate into the USA in order to make this nation stronger by their presence, and would rather transform a tiny part of this nation into a replica of where they came from should be deported immediately.
After all, if getting to the US meant a better life for them, then why would they want to reconstruct the nation they fled? That would fit the clinical definition of insanity.
How long will it take Al Queda to recruit Westerners who don't fit the ME profile? There is the IRA,Basque separatists,and various anti-human animal rights wackos.
From what I understand is Israel looks for potential terrorists, whereas in the US, a more throrough screening is random.
There is no way Israel looks at Mahmed al-Hassoun the same way it looks at Sven Peterssen.
Yeah but they took my lilly white butt's bags apart like I had Jihad tatooed on my forehead.
That's the problem. PC is calling all sorts of ridiculous things "insults."
But they don't have the PC police and the professional grievance crowd looking over their shoulder at every turn, and their media is not totally consumed with spreading the venom of every racial and ethnic special interest group.
Carefulness and caution are watchwords in Israel. They understand they are at war.
Our media and intellectual establishment are intent on convincing us that George Bush, not radical Islam, is responsible for 9/11.
Do I sound bitter? Maybe it's because I flew to Chicago a few days ago, and my Ashkenazi Jewish a** got the full "SSSS on the boarding pass" treatment. I wouldn't spit in a Whiteshirt's ear if his brain was on fire.
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