Posted on 06/13/2002 6:21:55 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
If Robert Frost was correct when he quipped that "a liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel," then America has descended into the depths of leftism. The systematic way in which government and the media have consistently followed the path of self-loathing and self-negation could be the source of great humor, if the matters being bungled were not so grave.
While the attacks of September 11th roused a dormant patriotism in the collective American bosom, it also unveiled how deeply entrenched public discourse is in political correctness. Day after day the "war on terror" brings more misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. Most security measures are either window dressings for public consumption or usurpations of civil liberties by power-hungry elements within the bowels of bureaucracy.
The myths need to be dispelled and the elephant in America's living room needs to be addressed for the sake of that rarest of post-modern commodities - the truth.
Myth #1: Terrorism is not about Islam.
In fairness, someone did try to warn America to this sobering fact last fall in a Wall Street Journal editorial. The author, Amir Taheri, is a Muslim. He declared that "to claim that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam amounts to a whitewash." Some may think it ironic that a Muslim author is the one sounding the warning bell about his own faith. It isn't ironic in the least. Given the ground rules of politically correct discourse, only a minority may criticize a minority - only a Muslim may criticize Muslims.
Myth #2: Profiling is an evil to be avoided at all costs.
Profiling is an integral part of detective work and one component of the process is a person's race. When a cross is set ablaze on a black homeowner's lawn, you can guess that "white male" is placed atop the list of likely attributes of potential perpetrators. A white male is also most likely to be a serial murderer.
Truthfully, there is nothing in the genetic composition of a race that dictates social behavior. The real danger is that similar groups of people tend to share common cosmologies. If an ethnic group (pygmies for example) adopts an evil practice (cannibalism) in their world view, one may rightly call them backwards and savage - not because they are animists or short or black or from a different part of the globe, but because they have chosen to dine on human flesh. Terrorists are, overwhelmingly, Muslim males between the ages of 17 and 40 and from Middle Eastern ethnicities. If there doesn't exist a genetic predisposition to terrorism in the genes of peoples of the Tigres and Euphrates, then it must be their shared belief system - Islam.
If you are a young Islamic Arab male, you fit the profile for 19 of 19 terrorists of September 11th and you should be prepared to face additional security in airports.
Myth #3: Part of the FBI's failure on September 11th was lack of Arab or Muslim agents.
This laughable idea comes from the spin machine of the FBI's restructuring. Director Mueller has announced an Arab-American/Muslim affirmative action hiring policy as a part of the new proactive FBI. What Mueller or Attorney General Ashcroft have not done is explain exactly how having stuffy white-bread types at the Bureau led to the success of the attacks. If anything, there is evidence that just the opposite is the case.
FBI counter-terrorism special agent-turned-whistleblower Robert Wright has related an episode of some import. Wright asserts that while investigating possible Islamic terrorist activities, a Muslim special agent refused to wear an undercover wire, stating that "Muslims don't record other Muslims." Mueller and Ashcroft have not addressed this claim.
Uncooperative Islamic FBI agents aside, the FBI does not receive the lion's share of the blame for the incidents of September 11th. That honor goes to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Because of INS's incompetence, the United States is overrun with illegal immigrants - some are past terrorists, some are potential terrorists.
Myth #4: We must ally the "moderate" Muslims.
The truth be told, we don't understand who's who in the world of Islam. President Bush trotted out Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi as the imam of "peaceful Islam." However it wasn't long before Tantawi was advocating the suicide bombers in Israel.
Even Mullah Omar calls himself a "moderate" Muslim, in that his Taliban regime did nothing more nor less than is called for in the Koran. With causuistries like that, Omar should move to Washington. After all, the FBI is hiring.
C.T. Rossi comments on contemporary culture for the Free Congress Foundation.
Free Congress Foundation
Well, not all. I believe all those bombs and murders in England and Ireland were the work of Protestants and Catholics. And don't forget our home-grown Christian terrorists.
Think a little bit here ....
Your comment doesn't make sense - or, inverting it - YOUR comment shows EXACTLY WHY profiling works, and is ESSENTIAL.
In North Ireland -- EVRY bomb against Protestants was FROM the young, white, CATHOLIC males - who happened to be in the IRA.
So, IN IRELAND, to attack the IRA, you MUST investigate FIRST young, white CATHOLIC males. You must profile for your target.
In the US, there have been no bombs against Protestants, and so there is NO CAUSE to profile against white catholic males --- HERE. There have been no bombs against catholics HERE, so there is no cause to investigate or profile white male protestants ... except by Reno, who attacks them based on a few superious abortion bombings. (Reno, in this, only hates white male conservative Christians.)
EVERY recent suicide airplane, truck, and building bombing and crash WORLDWIDE has been due to an organized islamic male attack..... No exception - even the suicide crash of the Egyptian Air plane outside of NY City last year was due to the deliberate crash by the islamic male co-pilot.
(Every case of recent political corruption is by a democrat, so we must remove democrats (black and white, male and female, from office to attack corruption and bribery and vote theft.)
So, by your logic, we must profile Islamic males if we are to track down abortion ring bombers, and must track down white male catholics if we are looking for airplane hijackers.
No, by your twisting of my simple statement, all terrorists are Muslim. I simply refuted a false position, which is that all terrorism is about Islam -- it isn't. Simply by the existence of abortion clinic bombers and Catholic terrorists in Ireland and England, the statement that all terrorism is about Islam is false. For some reason, our state department also classifies certain South American rebels as terrorists -- and that is entirely non-religous based.
Everything else you wrote has no bearing on my comment.
Again, let me ask the question: Why NOT profile the young males of this religion ... when THAT is where the trouble lies, at THIS particular point in time?
Why do you oppose the using the ONLY common ground to attack this threat - when, at the same time, the liberals are claiming racial and religious bias as THEIR combining factor. (If the blacks claim ONLY a black can represent them (in poilice, in politics, as an astronaut, as a lawyer, in religion, as a teacher, as an employer, ... wherever, why do you claim law enforcement cannot profile?
Unless we have another clinic shooting or a McVeih wannabe. Anyway, the statement didn't say "terrorism against the U.S." only "terrorism."
Why NOT profile the young males of this religion
If you'd read further, you'd see I'm not against profiling if done right. However, targeting people of that religion sounds very against the 1st Amendment's "respecting religion" clause. Paying more attenting to Arab males who fit the rest of the profile is sensible.
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