Once again, Liberals bend over backwards to give jihadists who want to kill innocent Americans every chance to do so. Only this time, they have a point... though not the point they think they have. Less than a month after the Tube bombings in London that killed 52 people, the ACLU's NY chapter is fighting to end random searches on the NYC subways. The argument they make -- that random searches are unconstitutional -- is ridiculous. The Fourth Amendment states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." There is nothing unreasonable about wanting to check the bags and backpacks of people boarding public transportation, while terrorists are carrying bombs onto that same type of transportation in order to commit mass murder.
On the other hand, I happen to agree with the ACLU that we should end random searches on all public transportation. Don't expect to see me joining a patchouli-drenched protest mob anytime soon, though. I'm against random searches because they do no good, not because anyone's feelings might be hurt. We can do much better than that... if we just ignore the hysterics.
Many Liberals feel faint whenever anyone proposes glancing at young, Islamic-looking men while checking for possible terrorists. The fact that young, Islamic-looking men perpetrated nearly every act of terrorism committed in recent years escapes them (as facts usually do). The fact that nineteen out of nineteen 9/11 hijackers were young, Islamic-looking men also seems to make no difference to them. Almost all of the terrorists who deliberately murdered innocents on London subways and Madrid trains, a Bali nightclub and a Beslan school -- among many other places -- were also young, Islamic-looking men as well.
I'm not saying that all people of that description are terrorists, simply observing the fact that most terrorists are people of that description. We are at war with devotees of a radical sect of Islam called Wahhabism. If most terrorists were white-haired, blue-eyed female Protestants over the age of 80, I'd say we should pay particular attention to people of that description. Purposely checking more young, Islamic-looking men than old, European-looking women, Liberals seem to feel, would be worse than letting those young, Islamic-looking men murder dozens, hundreds or even thousands of innocent people. Yet the next time such an event occurs on American soil, the same Liberals will be the first to condemn the Bush administration for not making us completely safe from terrorist attacks.
In deference to the Liberal position -- i.e., "anything that would make America safer is a bad thing" -- random searches were introduced at airports in response to 9/11, instead of directed searches. Racial profiling is avoided that way, but so are results. Airports are now full of elderly women and confused children removing their shoes, thanks to a young, Islamic-looking man who attempted to blow up a plane by secreting explosives in his shoes. Meanwhile countless young, Islamic-looking men breeze through the lines. Surely there's a chance that more of them are likely to be terrorists than people who might have stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Is it rational to pretend that everyone has the same likelihood of being a terrorist as people who may share a cultural background with those who have already attacked us?
Fine, let's not specifically target those who are most likely to be terrorists for personal searches before boarding public transportation. Let's simply cut down on the number of likely misses in those searches using reason and logic. We don't want to waste time and resources conducting searches of those who are least likely to be terrorists, do we? Instead of profiling, let's try reverse profiling -- cutting out the people who fit certain profiles from extraneous searches, leaving the rest to be checked more regularly.
Search the elderly at random? No way. I doubt Grandma will use that cane to beat an airline pilot into submission, nor is that hearing aid in Grandpa's ear likely to be a cleverly-disguised chunk of C-4. Treating them as uniformly dangerous is just statistically unreasonable. Same with children. Little Bobby is unlikely to be an al-Qaeda midget in disguise... but if a screener thinks he might be, then go ahead and search him. Families traveling together are highly illogical subjects for searches, based on past history of known terrorist behavior. Radical terrorists bent on mass murder don't usually invite the family along for the last ride to Paradise. The only time such people should qualify for specific searches is when their behavior seems out of character.
Focusing searches on those statistically more likely to be involved with terrorism is the best overall way to make us safer, but other ways have been tried in the past. It's odd that the people who are most outraged by the suggestion to concentrate screening where it will do the most good are those on the Left. Perhaps if President Bush herded people of Middle-Eastern descent -- men, women and children -- into internment camps for the duration of the war, they would appreciate his efforts more. After all, that was the course of action taken by a Democratic President when confronted by war with enemies of identifiable ethnic origins.
Many Americans consider Franklin Delano Roosevelt a hero today despite his internment of Americans of Japanese, German and Italian ancestry. No less a personage than Time Magazine's Managing Editor Walter Isaacson, however, recently praised him as "someone who embodied the struggle for freedom," a champion of democracy and civil rights. Thousands who had their civil rights taken away by the stroke of a pen might disgree.
Yet when Conservatives merely suggest concentrating airport and subway searches on those most likely to be terrorists, hysterical Liberals compare them not to Roosevelt, but to Hitler. Go figure.
