Good news: TSA to fight 'discrimination' against Muslims
The Obama administration has appointed Nawar Shora, legal director of the Arab-American Anti-Defamation Committee (ADC), to serve as a senior adviser for the TSA's office of civil rights and civil liberties. TSA - for those of you who aren't frequent travelers - are the people who are supposed to protect airline passengers within and departing from the United States. Paul Mirengoff reports that the ADC has a number of positions on protecting the US from attack that might be advocated by Nawar Shora. For example, it has been a fierce critic of the Patriot Act since day one. And ADC failed Scott's "Al Arian test" when it claimed that the indictment of Professor Sami Al Arian was "a political witch-hunt, a vendetta, and a kind of very, very ugly post-9/11 McCarthyism." Al Arian eventually pleaded guilty to conspiracy to help the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a specially designated terrorist organization.I have advocated many times on this blog that other countries adopt Israel's security system in which personal interviews are used to ferret out potential terrorists. Instead, American travelers will continue to be subjected to useless, demeaning searches that ignore the elephant in the room: The fact that all airline terrorism in the last thirty years has been committed by Muslims.
The Washington Post, in what I would describe as a celebratory article, is very clear about what Shora's role will be at TSA. It states (under his picture in an article appearing today) that Shora "is used to fighting for the civil rights of Muslims and Arabs, but now he will do so as a federal government official." Shora is equally clear, saying "it is about time I cross over to the government and start working within the system."
But TSA is not a civil rights organization; it is (or should be) an organization dedicated to promoting safety and thwarting terrorism. Shora's appointment is more evidence that TSA is not sufficiently dedicated to that purpose. Shora's mission in life is not promoting safety and thwarting terrorism; it is promoting the interests of Arab-Americans by, for example, making sure they are treated the same way other Americans are.
Coincidentally, or perhaps not, El Al Israel Airlines (which does its own security abroad as well) has been voted best in airline security by World Traveler Magazine readers for the third year running (since the award category was created) (Hat Tip: Israellycool via Twitter). But don't expect that kind of security to be implemented in the US anytime soon. It's far more important to pretend that we don't know the terrorists' origins.
What could go wrong?
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:28 PM
3 Comments:
Ironically El-Al may be forced to stop operating in South Africa because the SA government regards the airlines' security procedures as racist and a security risk.
The problem in the US is that the only guaranteed method of pre-identifying and grilling potential terrorists is very politically incorrect.
Not all arabs and muslims are terrorists. But it is also quite true that the vast, overwhelming majority of terrorists are arabs and muslims. This is by their own admission.
We do not allow ourselves to take the logical step of more closely scrutinizing likely terrorists, for fear it will make the larger group that they are embedded within, unhappy.
It won't violate their rights, their freedoms. Just their "sensitivities".
I haven't seen any language in the constitution on preserving my sensitivities. Because if I did, I would point out that it is an affront to me personally and to all non-terrorists, and non-arab non-muslims throughout the US, that one group gets to effectively defang our protections, and have kids in strollers and grannies groped for the sake of preserving their "honor".
This is wrong. It should not be the case. We should be introducing Israeli style security here in the US. And you happen to be part of a group that is known for flying planes into buildings, mass killings, and terror, well, I am sorry your feelings are hurt. The rest of us want to live, so we want to peel off the bad guys, and let you on your way.
Until they stop being bad, and stop killing in their gods name, and stop terrorizing, and start behaving with civility, this treatment should continue.
But it won't start, now that we have an arabist in the TSA.
The TSA already has had massive problems with security theatre. They are about to get much worse with this appointment.
Good job Mr. Obama. Good job.
If the U.S. had declared Islam a political ideology that is inimical to the Constitution and instituted Muslim Ideological Profiling (MIP) to screen for signs of radicalization (political Islam), we would never have suffered a 9/11, Ft. Hood Massacre, or other Muslim terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The rest is b.s. Study Islam's history free online with the Historyscoper and find out how deep Islam's rabbit hole goes at http://go.to/islamhistory
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