Posted on 10/02/2002 4:35:00 AM PDT by SJackson
America’s suspicion of everyone beyond its borders seems to reaching absurd proportions. The clearest demonstration of this has come with its treatment of its visitors, specifically its guests from Muslim countries. Washington has now announced new guidance for immigration authorities, which makes it almost certain that this discrimination will become a regular fact of life for Muslim arriving at US borders.
The understandable international complaints have begun. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has renewed his earlier protest, which was prompted by the humiliating treatment of his deputy Ahmad Abdullah Badawi, who was ordered to remove his belt and shoes before being allowed to board a Los Angeles flight to New York. If a top government minister travelling on a diplomatic passport can be subjected to such cavalier usage, what chance has the ordinary Muslim traveler ?
It must be suspected that the US authorities have codified the hard-line behavior of their immigration people, as a result of the outstanding failure of the FBI and CIA to keep track of known Al-Qaeda members who entered the country before the bombing. Unfortunately, with America in a constant state of near hysterical terrorist alert, it is unlikely that these new regulations will achieve anything more than giving the utmost annoyance and very often offense to many of its visitors.
With more than 350 entry points into the country, by land, sea and air, the attempt to monitor arrivals and departures effectively, is going to prove a bureaucratic nightmare. Officials nervous of censure from their bosses are likely to behave with ever more imperiousness than used to be the case. It was after all, never pleasant standing in the "foreign nationals arrival" queue waiting to be processed by an often abrupt and humorless official. And while this vast formal edifice is in place, it is likely that those who wish to the United States harm, will find secret ways to cross its extensive land borders or come ashore on its thousands of miles of coastline.
Of course, Washington is not alone in this. Security at European airports has been tightened notably and once again there is clear discrimination toward Muslims. Indeed throughout Europe we are seeing a growing backlash against all foreigners, as epitomized by the increasingly unsympathetic treatment of asylum seekers, who are now automatically assumed to be economic migrants and have to go to considerable lengths to prove their asylum claims.
However, though they are still feared, the Europeans are not new to terror attacks. By contrast, with the exception of the Oklahoma bombing, the United States had not known terrorism until Sept. 11 2001. Now the land of the free, which drew its people from every corner of the globe, is in the ironic position erecting barriers to the free movement of visitors, especially from the Muslim world. The danger here is quite clear. Once automatic and officially sanctioned suspicion becomes the norm for new arrivals, the official focus could turn upon those Muslims who are US citizens. Institutionalized discrimination against these people is now but a relatively small step and it is one that was taken once before, when in 1941 the US treated loyal Japanese-Americans with heartless bigotry.
Here's their embassy's telephone # : 202-572-9700
Fax # : 202-483-7661
Not so - the U.S. hadn't known domestic, large-scale ARAB terrorism up to that point, but terrorism per se has a long and grim history here, from the medicine-bottle poisoners through the Unabomber, various multiple shootings, random serial murders such as Son of Sam, Japanese balloons with bombs attached, Black Hand overspills from Europe, KKK night riders, various incidents by both sides in the War Between the States, not to mention a host of delights during the Vietnam War including (but not limited to) the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, etc, etc...no, it's nothing new to us. Nor is violent response. What's new is that our violent response is hitting home in the Arab nations, and that it is they, and not us, who are going to have to accommodate this wonderful new world that they helped create.
Don't forget WTC1, ten years ago. Personally, I'd throw Beirut, the Tehran embassy, the USS Cole, the African embassies, Khobar towers and an assortment of kidnappings and hijackings targeting Americans over the years.
Those were American's dieing. It's not that we didn't "know" Arab terrorism, we just turned a blind eye to it. Now we're reacting, the the Saudi's chagrin.
Gosh, ya think?
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