Posted on 06/21/2002 1:29:54 PM PDT by 1bigdictator
We need to profile
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Imagine you're a munitions manufacturer, and you manufacture hand grenades for the military. Your contract requires a guarantee that 99 percent of the hand grenades delivered are not duds. What do you do?
If you assumed there was an equal probability of every hand grenade being a dud, you might test them by pulling the pin and tossing each hand grenade to see if, in fact, it explodes. You'd be certain about whether the hand grenades were duds or not, but you'd have none to deliver. A more intelligent method would be to test a representative sample to make inferences about the population.
You say, "Williams, what's the point?" Let's look at our Department of Transportation (DOT) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mandates for air security. By their actions, they assign an equal probability that anyone who boards a plane is a potential hijacker, and that includes pilots and crew, the aged and infirm, and children and babies. That's why they do body scans, make people take off their shoes and confiscate scissors, fingernail files, cork screws and other items on their "prohibited" list. This vision of anti-terrorism is both stupid and costly. Are there more effective means? How about taking a test?
At the 1972 Olympics, who kidnapped and murdered Jewish athletes? In 1979, the U.S. Embassy in Iran was taken over by whom? During the 1980s, who kidnapped Americans in Lebanon? In 1983, the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by whom? In 1985, the Achille Lauro cruise ship was hijacked and a 70-year-old, wheelchair-bound American was murdered by whom? In 1985, TWA flight 847 was hijacked in Athens and a U.S. Navy diver was murdered by whom? In 1988, Pan Am flight 103 was bombed by whom? In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed by whom? In 1998, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by whom? On Sept. 11, four airliners were hijacked and used to destroy the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; who were the murderers? U.S. military action in Afghanistan is against whom? Earlier this year, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by whom?
We all know the answers to these questions. The perpetrators were not the people who are routinely harassed and inconvenienced at our airports: businessmen, women, children and babies. The terrorist murderers have been Muslim male extremists between the ages of 17 and 40. That fact suggests that there are gains from ethnic profiling -- namely, having security personnel on hand who'd be able to pull aside passengers who closely fit the profile of terrorists.
Why isn't this done? There are several possibilities. First, the DOT and FAA don't want to risk offending the politically correct among us. Second, it doesn't cost them anything to harass and inconvenience millions of passengers. The third, which should never be excluded, is that the people who run the DOT and FAA are just plain stupid.
The latter is surely the case in terms of their decree not permitting pilots to carry weapons. For the most part, commercial airline pilots are ex-military men trained in weapon use. If randomly assigned sky marshals carry weapons, there is absolutely no reason, at least an intelligent one, why pilots should not be permitted, as well.
But here's something for us all to think about: If the time ever comes when a commercial airliner is hijacked and headed toward a nuclear power plant, a bridge or a dam, and F-14s have to be scrambled to shoot it down, will the DOT and FAA bureaucrats be able to assure us that armed pilots would not have made a difference?
Of course not BUT!, to arm the pilots might actually lead people to believe that they are somehow responsible for their own safety and that guns might not be the "evil" things that the left portrays them to be....
Thus, all the paranoids will be screening looking for cartoons of Omar Sharif, while the terrorists will walk aboard looking like models from a Lexus commercial.
I'm sure the bad guys wouldn't be reading American media for ideas, naw, never happen.
Can anybody here can find that news story from Houston about the two college kids, free spirits, who deliberately sauntered around the airport, beards, unkempt hair, no baggage, until Security invited them into questioning? After it was all over, the Security folks did believe the kids who said they were bored between classes, and wanted to hang out somewhere interesting in air conditioning!
No hijacking that day, so all is well! :)
Because it would make entirely too much sense to do so. Also, it might hurt the feelings of some Iman of that "peaceful religion". I still have a feeling that the next time we see terrorism in our land that it won't have anything to do with airplanes but will happen in some place that everyone wants to believe is "safe".
You seem quick to dismiss any idea which can make us safer if it impacts Arabs/Muslims/Middle Easterners. Your story proves the need for profiling; not its lack of effectiveness. Security gaurds are not permitted to target bearded suspicous looking Middle Eastern looking males, so the 2 college kids you refer to were less likely to be questioned because of political correctness taking priority over safety.
Thinking that innocent arab males may be inconvenienced at an airport must make you squirm... but I sort of like the Empire State building in the New York skyline.
I believe the headline answers itself.
Really? I think our friends in Britain may disagree--as they label the IRA as a terrorist group. Our new allies in Russia might disagree, too--as they label rebels in Chechnya as terrorists. The list goes on and on--it's a subjective equation, and the answer isn't to heighten security for Slavs, the Irish, and Muslim-looking people.
Frankly, the government shouldn't have any sort of authority to search people at the airport, no matter WHAT they look like. On a so-called "conservative" forum, I'm amazed people in broach the subject.
Innocent arab males don't make me squirm.
Telling the bad guys what we're looking for does make me squirm. They're not that stupid all the time.
You keep looking for terrorists dressed in burnoose, riding a camel, and the bad guys are gonna' get past you faster than Jon Benet's murderer has eluded the cops.
Here you will (sadly) find what some refer to as Right Wing Socialists, i.e. all will be good if we give Big Brother tools to tromp our dislikables d'jour.
Thus, the infamous "nuke Mecca", and this morning apparently a former marine, now INS Law Enforcement on US/Mexico border, posted his cartoon of a man urinating on the Mexican flag!
Freedom of speech.
As my kids would say, "DUH!"
Profile or die - decisions, decisions!
If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)
It's interesting: Let's say that police in Washington D.C. decided to get tough on drugs. The police there claimed that most drug dealers are black people (I don't know if this is true or not--but let's say.), and so everyday on the way to work at GWU, Mr. Williams was stopped by police, and his car and person searched for drugs--simply because he was black. This was the police's effort to get tough on drugs. I think Mr. Williams would be outraged, and rightfully so.
This situation is analogous. Substitute "arab-looking" for "black" and "terrorist" for "drug dealer" and there you have it. Profiling certainly isn't an answer to anything, but I think rather, the *easy* solution that too many people are willing to take.
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