Coming back from a week-long holiday, I had to play some catch up today to understand the events surrounding the Christmas Day attempted attack on a flight into Detroit Metro Airport. On Friday, a 23-yr old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab made it onto a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit despite numerous warning signs including paying in cash, having no luggage, a denied visa into Britain, and a father willing to go an American embassy to warn that his son will capable of committing terrorist attacks. Much of the debate aftermath has been agreeable. For instance, Janet Napolitano must resign for continued ineptitude. After saying that our security system worked over the weekend, she later recanted amid polling saying 96% (!) of people disagreed with her. Also, most agree that making all passengers on international flights sit in there seats with nothing in their laps for the final hour of travel does not address the problem. But one thing that keeps being hinted at around many circles is a tough question to ask: Is it time we began to handle flight security with an increased measure of ethnic profiling?
Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com analyzed the statistical probability of being on a commercial flight taken over by a terrorist over the last decade. When you crunch the numbers of six impacted flights in the aughts to the number of domestic flights in that period, the odds of being on a departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. Silver compares that to the 1 in 500,000 odds you have of being struck by lightning. What Silver did not add, was that all six flights were hijacked by Muslim Extremists born and bred overseas. So with my statistical background, I can tell you that 100% of terrorized flights in the last decade, were hijacked by foreign-born Muslim extremists.
It’s a tough opinion in a politically correct society, but the more I read, the more I find myself asking when is enough, enough? I know, white Christian male…scared of muslim terrorists, typical racist, right? But when does our attempts at being racially sensitive effect our ability to rationalize what threats are real in today’s screwed up world? I am sure many Arab-Americans feel they are already strongly prosecuted, but what I notice when I take flights, is how often I see an average businessman or a mother of three being pulled from line for further security checks.
I read several posts on Huffington Post where the comments are not so much about the terrorist himself, but rather the strategies used by the TSA to screen passengers. Here is a sampling of actual comments from this article:
Thanks to the complete ineptitude of security to properly detain this passenger before he even got on a flight, the average citizen will now be subjected to more ridiculous & asinine security measures to get on board.
We airline passengers now have to be more inconvenienced due to airline/security personnel in Lagos and/or Amsterdam allowing this guy to board the plane after purchasing an international ticket with cash.
Our government has to do a better job. The people don’t deserve to be treated like this.
We are losing ourselves and slowly becoming police states in the name of freedom. How sad that so few in the government see the sickening irony of that.
Staying in your seats for the last hour of a flight with nothing in your lap does NOTHING to ensure safety. Neither does the small bottle of shampoo in the clear baggy, taking your laptop out of your bag, taking off your shoes etc. It’s all smoke and mirrors to make it APPEAR the TSA is doing something pro active. Another “win” for terrorism.
Personally, I don’t care about taking my shoes off – but many are annoyed by having to do that. I am not saying I necessarily disagree with the content of the article, but find it peculiar that the author is willing to bash the reactionary tactics of the TSA, but not offer any solutions that he thinks would be worthwhile. Would they feel better if there was more racial profiling and less security on them, individually? What do you think they would think about full body scanning when they don’t trust government surveillance now?
I am not scared of an African-American man flying out of south Chicago, a Hispanic out of Laredo, or a Korean out of Seoul. I’m not scared of muslims born in America having the level of hatred to hijack and kill our fellow countrymen. But I do know when statistics tell me who is an enemy of my country, and who is the most likely to attack innocent civilian Americans. Whether you are liberal or conservative – if you don’t want increased scrutiny into your own civil rights, the harsh reality is we need to increase racial profiling of foreign-born Muslims on domestic and international flights. When Joe Q. American decides to blow up a plane – I’ll re-evaluate that position.
UPDATE (10:08pm CST): Unknowingly, The O’Reilly Factor did a segment on this topic tonight. I usually catch the show but because 1) I hate all his subs other than Ingraham and 2) I was in a hotly contested fantasy football final tonight – I did not watch it. Wish I would have because they make some interesting points. I agree with Ann Coulter with almost all she says.
UPDATE #2 (11:05pm CST): Article from the Huffington Post mocking the audicity of pointing out the common sense involved in profiling the enemy who has attacked 6 planes in the decade. Obviously, I disagree with most all said in the article and in the comments. This is not some cheap attempt to be racist; it’s a practical response for those who feel unsafe during travel and those who complain about airline travel security and its many inefficiences. Unlike people like Jason Linkins, I didn’t want to just complain about the problem, slam the opposition and offer no solution.
see “t s eliot Speaks to Abdul Mudallad…..”
http://lwdewhirst.wordpress.com
Nice comments from Huff Post. Geez…blame the system i suppose.
Assuming those same folks would shriek at the idea of increased racial profiling. Why again is this not common sense to people? Why does the left trust so whole heartedly in govt, but the idea of simple common sense measures to ACTUALLY protect ourselves are so egregious? Maybe thats a good Obama can bring to the table, push the common sense the right has been all along, and THEN his supporters will finally buy into it…
Johnny did you see this from the journal?
http://online.wsj.com/video/how-israel-screens-for-terrorists/987D025A-145D-42F5-9756-7B43CC7613CE.html
Looks like our newly thrown under the bus ally prefers racial profiling to cut down on terrorism in their airports. I would send this out to a lot of people but im worried that this would just make my liberal friends hate the Jews even more…..
I heard about Israeli screening, but I hadnt watched that video yet. I would prefer that over full-body scanning, like Coulter says in the O’Reilly video I linked too. But even full-body scanning doesnt bother me too much – I know Im not doing anything wrong. I just wish there was more consistency with their screening.
I dont think shoe scans or rules of in-flight behavior (seriously the 75 mins with no electronics or things in your lap is ridiculously) are the answer. I actually am intrigued by the idea of in-air marshals. With all the new government employees being hired, why not hire some that have a practical use? 2 flight attendants, 1 marshal for every flight.
One more thing I like from what Coulter and you both said. This is a big chance for Obama to show some seriousness over the Homeland Security/National Security issue. I dont blame his admin for this happening, but he has to fire Napolitano (I heard two Homeland Security congressman from both sides of the aisles call her into question today…not a good sign) and he has to apply some common sense rather than more inefficient airport policies so no ones feelings get hurt.
Johnny I couldn’t agree more. As more information is released on the failed terrorist attack, I find myself getting more and more frustrated with our Administrator and their handling of the situation. I’m not a Bush apologist, but if this happened during his Administrator the left Media would be having a hate fest portraying him as an idiot and incapable of leading our country. 72 Hours! That’s how long it took for President Obama to even acknowledge the attack and for a moment we were even led by the media to believe it was a rogue attack. Then Janet Napolitano claims, “The system worked”, then immediately changed her tune when she realized the stupidity of her statement. She should be fired and anyone who came in contact with the terrorist. He was on 2 no-fly lists but not the official? The bureaucracy of this disgusts me, when the boys own father called the FBI or CIA to inform them of his radical ways. Also, I will profile like no other when I travel. I’m sick and tired of people being afraid to act on potential terrorist activity because of the potential backlash from the media and ACLU-likes. I don’t give a sh*t if you’re offended, we know who these people are, we know what they believe, we know where they are from, and we know what they look like, yes there are domestic terrorists as well, but they adhere to the same profile. I’ve yet to hear of 40 something WASP housewife from Nebraska on the no-fly list. The attacker shouldn’t have been on that plane and once again everyone responsible needs to be accountable, fire everyone who decided to not put him on the list, all the way up the chain.
So what happens now, we go from having 10x too many TSA employees at screening to 20x too many? We ask 5 yr olds to take their shoes off? We remove our shampoo if above 3 ounces? While the same time telling al-Qaeda what our flight restrictions are so they can adhere their practices. But what we won’t do is hold people accountable for this potential attack, we won’t increase screening equipment because it may violate our rights. I can hear it now, “You have no right to ask me to remove my head garment”. Well until people stop trying to blow up planes, get over it.
There were signs, cash ticket, no bags, one-way flight, on multiple no-fly lists(but not the official), father notified the government of his son’s radical ways. Yet, somehow the system works!?!? The same thing happened with the Fort Hood Shooting, history of psychiatric behavior, outspoken against the killing of muslims, documented military personnel warning signs, contact with so-called ‘Online Osama’ from Yemen, etc. This administrator needs to put aside their political jargon and step up their efforts to prevent future attacks and stop worrying about who you’ve offending in the process, at what point will our overly politically correct society realize its costing lives?
Brandon,
Oreilly said months back that with Obama’s shift away from Bush era policies regarding terror tactics, that if we were to be hit again, Obama would be through. So i thought about it, if the Detroit bomber would have succeeded, which by sure luck he didnt, Obama would not have been through. Thank God it didnt go down that way, but i can envision how the media would have played it. It’s along the lines of the way the current admin is handling the situation as it stands. Blame the system, blame the build up to it, blame the past admin, dont look for solutions.
It is quite ridic that after the Shoe Bomber, everyone has been forced to remove all shoes just in case. But they failed to realize that they still didnt have a way to test for the substance the shoe bomber and the Detroit bomber were carrying. So its madness and we are no more safe than we were.
Im also shocked by our higher ups in the intel community. If you caught the comments by the National Security Advisor for Homeland security John Brennan, former director of the CIA and NSA General Hayden and others on Sunday, even Pete Hoesktra member of the house intelligence committee, you saw that they are not willing to engage full on in ethnic or religious profiling. They also will not acknowledge that we are in a global struggle to fight RADICAL ISLAM. Michael Chertoff, formber BUSH Sec of Homeland Security, said its not based on ethnicity or religion, but simply on behavior…. WHAT!!!!!??? Not based on religion? And these are the people we trust.. Have you seen a terrorist lately, specifically ones that come from islamic theocracies that are not practioners of radical Islam? Isnt it a fact that 99.999999% of terrorists are muslim? Am i missing something?
More later.
I find it ironic that the media is blaming American aviation authorities for the security breach, even though the ‘christmas day bomber’ passed security in a different country. How does that make sense??