Posted on 08/01/2005 6:45:46 AM PDT by conservativecorner
In the wake of the London bombings, New York City is now searching the bags of subway riders. As you might expect, this is provoking the usual cluster of perverse reactions. Someone on Air America, the liberal talk radio network, suggested that riders carry many bags to confuse and irritate the cops. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, normally a sane fellow, has ordered that the searches be entirely random, to avoid singling out any one ethnic or religious group. So if someone fits the suicide bomber profile—young Muslim male, short hair, recently shaved beard or mustache, smelling of flower water (a preparation for entering paradise)—the police must look away and search the nun or the Boy Scout behind him. What’s the point of stopping a terrorist if you have to trample political correctness to do it? Besides, the New York Civil Liberties Union opposes all bag searches. No surprise there. The national American Civil Liberties Union still opposes passenger screening at airports. In a speech at the Brookings Institution, historian Fred Siegel said that the Democrats, pegged as the party of criminals’ rights, are in danger of becoming the party of terrorists’ rights.
From the first moments after the attacks of 9/11, we had indicators that the left would not be able to take terrorism seriously. Instead of resolve, we got concern about emotional closure and “root causes,” warnings about the allegedly great danger of a backlash against Muslim Americans, arguments that violence directed at America is our own fault, and suggestions that we must not use force, because violence never solves anything. “We can’t bomb our way to justice,” said Ralph Nader.
The denial of the peril facing America remains a staple of the left. We still hear that the terrorism is a scattered and minor threat that should be dealt with as a criminal justice matter. In Britain last October, the BBC, a perennial leader in foolish leftism, delivered a three-part tv series arguing that terrorism is vastly exaggerated. Al Qaeda barely exists at all, the series argued, except as an idea that uses religious violence to achieve its ends. Besides, the series said, a dirty bomb would not kill many people and may not even kill anyone. This ho-hum approach isn’t rare. Though evidence shows that the terrorists are interested in acquiring nuclear weapons to use against our cities, a learned writer for the New York Review of Books insists that the real weapons of mass destruction are world poverty and environmental abuse. Of course, world poverty is rarely mentioned by terrorists, and those known to be involved have almost all been well fed and are well to do.
The “our fault” argument seems permanently entrenched. After the London bombings, Norman Geras of the University of Manchester wrote in the Guardian that the root causes and blame-Blair outbursts were “spreading like an infestation across the pages of this newspaper . . . there are, among us, apologists for what the killers do.” That has been the case on both sides of the Atlantic. After 9/11, Michael Walzer, one of the most powerful voices on the left, warned about “the politics of ideological apology” for terrorism.
In the June 2005 issue of the American Prospect, he returned to the theme. “Is anybody still excusing terrorism?” he asked. “The answer is yes: Secret sympathy, even fascination with violence among men and women who think of themselves as ‘militants,’ is a disease, and recovery is slow.” Though the argument has shifted somewhat, he wrote, the problem is “how to make people feel that the liberal left is interested in their security and capable of acting effectively. We won’t win an election until we address this.”
Walzer’s analysis is a strong one. The Bush administration has botched many things, but large numbers of Americans go along with the president because he displays what the left apparently cannot: moral clarity and seriousness about what must be done. When the ideas of the left come into view, the themes often include the closing of Guantánamo, attacks on the Patriot Act, opposition to military recruitment on campuses, casual mockery of patriotism (a whole art exhibit in Baltimore was devoted to the theme), and a failure to admit that defeating terrorism will require some trade-offs between security and civil liberties. Is this a serious program? Real security, Walzer says, will depend on hunting down terrorist cells, cutting off the flow of money, and improving surveillance at key sites. He writes: “The burden is on us—nobody else—to make the case that these things can be done effectively by liberals and leftists who will also, in contrast to today’s Republicans, defend the civil liberties of American citizens.” Good argument. How will the left respond?
Tough.
"That's not a profile, that's a generalization."
Yeah, but unlike your own profiling specification, not many are going to slip through the net. While it would be nice to satisfy your high minded notion of a proper profiling policy, I am not willing to risk another American life to satisfy your particular sensibilities.
It's coming because it has to. Get used to it.
Good point. I hadn't thought of that.
Plenty of racial profiling when the Beltway Sniper was gunning people down, what's the difference?
It can be logically argued (and it has been) that reasonable searches do not require a search warrant. Perhaps you have never heard of probable cause, but it does exist.
DAMN STRAIGHT BUMP!!
Supremes are the ones who made probable cause a reason to search without obtaining a warrant. It is unconstitutional and was not used in this country until the 20th century.
Even if you factor in probable cause, which, as I said, only exists in judges minds, carrying a bag is not probable cause. They are searching people at random, therefore are making warrantless searches without probable cause.
However, I think you missed the whole point of my post. My post said that if a person was going to view profiling as unconstitutional, then you would have to view the whole search your bag thing as unconstitutional. If we are going to step over the line we should make sure the searches accomplish something. Searching the bags of 85 yo white women will not turn up bombs. Searching the bags of middle eastern males between the ages of 17 to 60 MIGHT. AND in view of the fact that some women in Iraq and other areas carry weapons and bombs for the men, we might think about profiling middle eastern women also.
This is not RACIAL profiling, it is cultural profiling and is something that must be done if we are to keep ourselves from being blown up on a daily basis.
Calex59,
Although I don't have time to discuss each of your points right now, I do agree with your contention that profilling is not only reasonable, but neccessary.
"The demand for more profiling, by some, seems to have undertones of bigotry in it."
You call it bigotry, I call it self defense. You sound like one of those CAIR propagandists desperately trying to use our political correctness as a weapon against us. While the 'vast majority' of middle eastern people MAY be peaceful folks, they are besieged by an abhorrant ideology (Islam) that, with a little prodding, can influence the easily influenced to perform unspeakable acts. No, sorry, no sympathy here. Pitty for the misgueded perhaps, but that is all. These 'peace loving' people need to clean up their act from inside.
misgueded=misguided
We're fighting not only the enemy within (the Islamo-fanatical fifth column in our midst) but also the fellow-traveling collaborationists in academe, the main stream media, and the federal government.
Let's face it, Islam has been infected with a violent strain that more "moderate" Muslims are unable or unwilling to eradicate. If they want to live with cutthroats as neighbors in Krapistan, more power to them. I don't want to, and since we can't tell who the violent ones are by looking at them, there must be no more Muslim immigration to our country and we should begin mass deportations of Muslims.
Ok, then we will agree to disagree on the other points:)
Yeah and most of it was dead wrong, except for a few people who could think outside the box.
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