On The Third Hand

29 December, 2001: "Ethnic Profiling"

I read Ann Coulter's article in the Jewish World Review with both eyebrows trying to climb past my forehead to hang waggling in midair. She advocates ethnic profiling because:

In every one of these attacks by Muslim extremists, there appears to be one or more Muslim extremists involved. This ought to help the airlines engage in more accurate risk assessment.

She then goes on to give an impressive list of attacks by Muslim extremists. I'll grant she's quite right, these all were attacks by Muslim extremists. So far, I've seen no case for ethnic profiling. She goes on to state (and I'll admit she is quite witty, albeit illogical):

So naturally, it took the airlines completely by surprise last week when the passenger who tried to detonate a sneaker bomb on a passenger jet turned out to be a Muslim extremist. Doggedly imitating an Alzheimer's joke, the airlines instantly began ever more intrusive examinations of elderly black men, cowboys and Asian women with small children.

I suspect she must have seen my blond cousin and his Asian wife and their (4 year old) daughter get searched. However, I'm still not seeing what good ethnic profiling will do. Richard Reid, John Walker and David Hicks (the Australian) are not Arabs. She finishes up with this blast:

But on another front -- the commercial aircraft war-zone opened by al-Qaida -- bin Laden is right: We refuse to fight. Bedraggled smelly men who make Talibanist John Walker look like Beaver Cleaver are getting on airplanes with C4 explosive material, and we commend ourselves for being so "civilized."

I see now. Ann thinks that searching bedraggled smelly men is "ethnic profiling". The definition of ethnic must surely have changed since I last looked it up. Also, the 911 hijackers were probably neither smelly nor bedraggled.

I suspect that what she is trying to say is "religious profiling". Unfortunately, religious profiling is a bit of a problem. I just double-checked my passport and drivers license, and neither has anything about religion anywhere on it. I suppose you could have people fill out a questionaire but I suspect suicide bombers and would-be hijackers would simply lie.

The best bet for Airport security is to search everyone they think may be suspicious, or search absolutely everyone (yes, I realise what a problem that would be). It would help if they'd get more dogs and better technology for examining bags and passengers. But the best security is still with suspicious passengers and crew members who don't hesitate to keep an eye on someone and stop them if they try something. As Peggy Noonan said a while back, "we're all soldiers now".

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