Posted on 12/28/2004 7:55:25 AM PST by forty_years
For years, it has been my position that the threat of radical Islam implies an imperative to focus security measures on Muslims. If searching for rapists, one looks only at the male population. Similarly, if searching for Islamists (adherents of radical Islam), one looks at the Muslim population.
And so, I was encouraged by a just-released Cornell University opinion survey that finds nearly half the U.S. population agreeing with this proposition. Specifically, 44 percent of Americans believe that government authorities should direct special attention toward Muslims living in America, either by registering their whereabouts, profiling them, monitoring their mosques, or infiltrating their organizations.
Also encouraging, the survey finds the more people follow TV news, the more likely they are to support these common-sense steps. Those who are best informed about current issues, in other words, are also the most sensible about adopting self-evident defensive measures.
That's the good news; the bad news is the near-universal disapproval of this realism. Leftist and Islamist organizations have so successfully intimidated public opinion that polite society shies away from endorsing a focus on Muslims.
In America, this intimidation results in large part from a revisionist interpretation of the evacuation, relocation, and internment of ethnic Japanese during World War II. Although more than 60 years past, these events matter yet deeply today, permitting the victimization lobby, in compensation for the supposed horrors of internment, to condemn in advance any use of ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion in formulating domestic security policy.
Denying that the treatment of ethnic Japanese resulted from legitimate national security concerns, this lobby has established that it resulted solely from a combination of "wartime hysteria" and "racial prejudice." As radical groups like the American Civil Liberties Union wield this interpretation, in the words of Michelle Malkin, "like a bludgeon over the War on Terror debate," they pre-empt efforts to build an effective defense against today's Islamist enemy.
Fortunately, the intrepid Ms. Malkin, a columnist and specialist on immigration issues, has re-opened the internment file. Her recently published book, bearing the provocative title In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror (Regnery), starts with the unarguable premise that in time of war, "the survival of the nation comes first." From there, she draws the corollary that "Civil liberties are not sacrosanct."
She then reviews the historical record of the early 1940s and finds that:
Within hours of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, two American citizens of Japanese ancestry, with no prior history of anti-Americanism, shockingly collaborated with a Japanese soldier against their fellow Hawaiians.
The Japanese government established "an extensive espionage network within the United States" believed to include hundreds of agents.
In contrast to loose talk about "American concentration camps," the relocation camps for Japanese were "spartan facilities that were for the most part administered humanely." As proof, she notes that over 200 individuals voluntarily chose to move into the camps.
The relocation process itself won praise from Carey McWilliams, a contemporary leftist critic (and future editor of the Nation), for taking place "without a hitch."
A federal panel that reviewed these issues in 1981-83, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, was, Ms. Malkin explains, "Stacked with left-leaning lawyers, politicians, and civil rights activists – but not a single military officer or intelligence expert."
The apology for internment by Ronald Reagan in 1988, in addition to the nearly $1.65 billion in reparations paid to former internees was premised on faulty scholarship. In particular, it largely ignored the top-secret decoding of Japanese diplomatic traffic, codenamed the MAGIC messages, which revealed Tokyo's plans to exploit Japanese-Americans.
Ms. Malkin has done the singular service of breaking the academic single-note scholarship on a critical subject, cutting through a shabby, stultifying consensus to reveal how, "given what was known and not known at the time," President Roosevelt and his staff did the right thing.
She correctly concludes that, especially in time of war, governments should take into account nationality, ethnicity, and religious affiliation in their homeland security policies and engage in what she calls "threat profiling." These steps may entail bothersome or offensive measures but, she argues, they are preferable to "being incinerated at your office desk by a flaming hijacked plane."
http://netwmd.com/articles/article837.html
Interesting. Hawaii wasn't even a state at the time, so I'd be curious if any action on the part of the U.S. government could have been opposed on Constitutional grounds anyway.
Can you blame them?
I would hope that any freedom-loving American would also refuse to sign such an oath.
Citizens or not, everyone here is entitled to basic human rights. Due process is not exclusive to American citizens. Forced internment of anyone who hasn't committed a crime has no place in a nation built in the name of liberty.
Where the hell do you get that ? There are plenty of racists in all camps, conservative and liberal. I think there are actually more in the liberal camp and to specifically single out paleos because a few of their members might be neo nazis is not right.
In fact, it is as bad as interning all japs just because 1 or 2 might be spies.
A great many--far more than the actual number of Japanese-Americans . There were a few internments for good and reasonable cause. In these cases, the government presented evidence before a judge, and the accused was allowed to question that evidence. (Due process, whaddafugginconcept...)
Taking that position, would you have willingly given up those American lives to not be a "racist"?
How much freedom are you personally willing to forfeit in return for a government promise of security? That which they claim the government claims it can do to American citizens of Japanese descent today, can be done to "right-wing extremists" tomorrow.
How many American lives would you be willing to give up before you could think about internment?
Hey, let's get this back to Pipes' idiotic argument: the vast majority of rapists are men. One man can commit many rapes, and many of those rapes can include murder. How many rapes (and concomitant murders) are you willing to accept before you could think about imprisoning interning all men in concentration detention camps?
I think everyone is missing an important point.
NO ONE wants to intern the muslims, only look at them more closely than someone else and I think that is justified.
Being jailed is not the same as being profiled for investigation.
You know, the Jews were a large security risk to Hitler's germany. I suppose you support their internment too. I'm not saying you support their execution, but for a lot of them it was simply internment of a possibly traitorous group.
Fine, but why would anyone use a book entitled In Defense of Internment to reinforce that point? Malkin's book has been praised heavily by many so-called "conservatives," but the title itself implies that internment is nothing but a form of profiling.
I don't know what you are talking about. MOST of the US aircraft mfg. in 1941 was on the west coast and ALL of that was within range of ANY Japanese gunboat that pulled up to shore or anywhere near shore. There was NO US navy to stop them and next to NO ground troops immediately present to protect these facilities. Should the Japanese have been 'removed' from the cities.... ??? American Xenophobia??? War footing good sense...??? Knee jerk reaction of a government already caught once in a humiliating and destructive surprise attack??? You figure it out.
Anything carried to an extreme is usually bad and internment is profiling carried to the extreme with the only thing more extreme being systematic execution.
Extremes and absolutes have limits.
Terry Nichols and company. They were terrorists too. But one terrorist does not make a case for extreme profiling of an entire people.
It was in range of any japanese gunboat with the capability of crossing the Pacific Ocean undetected which meant near zero probability. How can I be so sure the probablity was near zero ? Because if what you say is true, then the Japs would have tried to do it and the fact that they had either zero attempts and/or zero successes means by virtue of indisputable empiracle real world evidence, I am right and you are wrong.
3) Many JA's were dual citizens. Further most JA's were under the age of 16 and were only Americans by virtue of being born in this country. Most of the JA's over 25 were in fact Japanese resident aliens - not American citizens.
"You've just contradicted yourself."
How So?
I would make it virtually impossible for any Muslim with a hint of extremism in his backround to enter this country. And I would make those already here JUMP through many hoops in order to stay.
Muslims born here or naturalized citizens of our nation would or course NOT be in this catagory!!
Add the War on Dugs and other crimes.
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