Racial profiling is effective against terrorism - so says Republican Senator, James Inhofe. I guess he is still under the assumption that all terrorists look like Bin Laden.
I'm, for one -- I know it's not politically correct to say it -- I believe in racial and ethnic profiling. I think if you're looking at people getting on an airplane and you have X amount of resources to get into it, you need to get at the targets, not my wife. And I just think it's something that should be looked into. The statement that's made, it's probably 90 percent true with some exceptions, like the Murrah federal office building in my state, Oklahoma. Those people, they were not Muslims, they were not Middle Easterners. But when you hear that not all Middle Easterners or Muslims between the age of 20 and 35 are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims or Middle Easterners between the age of 20 and 35, that's by and large true.
So, let us recap. The poor misinformed senator believes that if the airport security focuses on Middle Easterners we'll all be safer. Well if his plan was followed, then surely the latest terrorist, the Nigerian underwear bomber would have been missed in a U.S. airport, because he surely doesn't appear Middle Eastern to the average airport screener.
And what about white Muslims with extremist views? Were there not white Taliban? And what of the new white converts that have been trained in terrorist tactics, precisely because of their all-American appearance.
An additional concern, it says, "is a group of nearly 10 non-Yemeni Americans who traveled to Yemen, converted to Islam, became fundamentalists, and married Yemeni women so they could remain in the country." One U.S. official, it reports, described them as "blond-haired, blue-eyed types" who "fit a profile of Americans whom al-Qaeda has sought to recruit over the past several years."
Once again the GOP plan to protect us from the terrorists gets a big fat fail. Terrorists do not only come in the religious extremist variety, they also come in the government hating flavor (Tim McVeigh anyone?), the disgruntled employee flavor, the spurned lover flavor, the angry teenager flavor (Columbine anyone?), and the really unpredictable delusional voice hearing flavor (Unabomber anyone?), ethnic and/or racial profiling will do nothing to stop or deter these types who are just as determined and can cause just as much death and fear as the evil Islamic terrorists the good senator is so frightened of.
I don't pretend to know the solution of spotting wackjobs before they attack, but I do know that narrowly focusing on a single group of people leaves you blind to the other dangers that walk right by with an American accent and a smile.
