In "A sure-fire legal recipe for airport insecurity" in the San Francisco Chronicle, February 13, Debra J. Saunders offers some common sense on the Nicholas George case:
Last August, Nicholas George, 22, was getting ready to fly from Pennsylvania to Pomona College in Claremont (Los Angeles County) when TSA agents found Arabic-English flash cards in his pocket - the 200 cards included such words as "bomb" and "explosive" - two stereo speakers in his carry-on bag, a Jordanian student ID card, and a passport that showed he had visited Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Sudan. TSA agents detained George for questioning. They determined he was not a security threat and released him less than five hours later. Now, he is suing.Of course the ACLU is representing George. The group explained in a press release that episodes like George's "may actually make us less safe, by diverting vital resources and attention away from true security threats."
Nonsense. If ever there was a person you want the TSA to look at very carefully, it's a young male who has Arabic flashcards with words like "bomb" in his pocket, studied in Jordan and recently spent time in Sudan, a country that the State Department believes to sponsor terrorism. Add the fact that George had stereo speakers - remember an explosive-laden tape recorder was used to bring down Pam Am Flight 103 in 1988 - in his carry-on luggage, and it would amount to professional malpractice if TSA and FBI agents did not search and question George.
When I first read this story, I had to wonder if, in a world with no shortage of individuals hungry to be victims or discredit the system, the young man was trying to be detained....
(As an aside: The ACLU complaint claims that authorities never Mirandized George during the nearly five hours he was held. That would mean that authorities were faster to Mirandize accused Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab than George. That means authorities questioned George longer than Abdulmutallab without Mirandizing him.)
According to the complaint, a TSA supervisor questioned George "in a hostile and aggressive manner," while he was "polite and calm." Also, FBI agents questioned George to see if he was involved with any "pro-Islamic groups," then determined George was not a threat. However, the complaint alleges that FBI questions were "wide-ranging and strayed far from any conceivable criminal activity."
Boo hoo.
"Nick is not claiming to have been scarred for life. No one is trying to get rich off this," Roper told me. And: "What this is about is accountability."
You see, if learning Arabic or traveling to the Middle East is enough to get you handcuffed and questioned by the FBI, then - Roper said this - "the terrorists have won."
Au contraire, if TSA staff, airport cops and FBI agents - the plaintiffs [sic -- should be defendants] in this lawsuit - are afraid to do their jobs, then terrorists will win.
Look no further than Fort Hood, Texas. Colleagues were afraid to report the radicalized rants of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, lest they seem anti-Islamic, so they looked the other way. The toll: 13 dead....
I expect that this kind of thing will become common all over the USA and Europe. Take people who meet all the criteria to be obvious suspects but ensure that they are "clean". Ensure that they are co-operative and do nothing that can be criticised but waste a lot of time. Then wind up the "Islamophobia" and "discrimination" accusations.
The Muslims then win twice. They criticise and discredit the security measures for failing to detect anything and then demand that they be "justified".
To say that, "Nick is not claiming to have been scarred for life. No one is trying to get rich off this," Roper told me. And: "What this is about is accountability", is just egregious.
No doubt the "scarred for life" accusations and demands for compensation will come soon. "Accountability" seems to be the new Muslim "word du jour". If someone does something to Muslims then Muslims want them to be "accountable" for the consequences. Blame transference once again from the world's "victims".
Roper and Nick George have an odd idea of accountability! I guess their definition of it does not include "personal" accountability.
I, too, have a little set of Arabic flash cards. If I am sent to Afghanistan, I will get or make a set of similar cards in Pashto and/or Dari and study them. I am a soldier, so the cards have words like "gun", "bomb", "explosive", "claw", "death to America/Infidels", etc. These are words I want to be able to recognize when I see them on a wall or hear them on a street in Iraq.
Because I am also a paramedic, I also have words/phrases like "pain/fever/arm/stomach/head/gunshot wound/infection/worms/burns/medicine/etc. These are words that I might need when interacting with locals.
I also carry a little set of mini-speakers for my MP3 player because I get extremely cranky without my bluegrass music. (A cranky soldier/paramedic can make everybody's day go to Hell in a hurry!)
Unlike Nick George, when I travel with such items I understand that I may very well fall under some suspicion. I understand that some questioning will probably be done along with thorough searches of my background, belongings and person.
Unlike Nick George, I am not a crybaby looking to portray myself as a victim. Nick has more options when he travels than I do when I travel. He is a private citizen and has complete freedom to travel by whatever mode of transportation suits his fragile ego best (which is precisely what he did). When I travel on military business, I use the method that I am told to use.
It sounds like Nick George needs to put on his "big girl panties" next time he goes to the airport!
I dropped my friend off at the airport yesterday, but he never got on the flight. The luggage scan found a glass pipe in his suitcase and he's been thrown in jail.
My friend is an ordained Christian minister.
I have to go pick up his stuff today.
Some security priorites we have here.
When this sort of thing becomes common in this country other people will respond this Muslim outrage in a very Muslim way.
Is every investigation of a suspicious person at an airport expected to result in nabbing a terrorist or else it will be deemed illegitimate or unlawful? Will it now be considered "profiling" to detain someone with suspicious objects in their baggage? The complaint alleges that FBI questions were "wide-ranging and strayed far from any conceivable criminal activity." It is legitimate for the FBI to ask such questions. The TSA and FBI need to ask questions to see how a suspect will respond. The Israelis do this with people waiting on line at airports. They engage them in seemingly ordinary conversation and note their responses.
The fact that Nicholas George is making so much trouble, instead of making an intelligent assessment of the situation and the difficulties for the TSA of knowing what hints and leads to rely on, indicates he is not the sort of person who, later in life, should be hired by the government. But he needn't worry. Of course, if he proceeds in the mental path that he appears to have chosen -- by the way, Ibn Warraq is convinced that there is a pre-existing mental condition among many who take up the study of Islam (and Arabic) to favor it, and to exhibit signs of other attitudes that are worrisome -- MESA Nostra will be eager to promote him in academe.
At this point, he should
1) drop the lawsuit
2) express his chagrin at ever having started the whole thing
3) explain that, upon reflection, and understanding the harried nature of the security agents' jobs, it was understandable that what was in his luggage might arouse suspicion, and
4) apologize for his behavior
5) get back to work, and try to find out a bit more about Islam, along the way, possibly by starting with the books of Joseph Schacht, Snouck Hurgronje, Arthur Jeffrey, and David Margoliouth.
6) get back to us in five years, and tell us all what he's learned.
And if I look both ways crossing the street that means the bad drivers have won!
If we allow our PC BS to prevent us from being realistic the terrorists most certainly have won.
After Pearl Harbor, we put the Japanese in internment camps. Do we constantly hear about the horrors of that? No. It wasn't nice but at the time we thought it necessary. In hind sight we went too far. But now we've gone too far in the other direction. Now when we have a people (or a belief system) that REALLY IS A THREAT and they are blatant in letting us know that, we're just too darn niced to hurt anyone's felings.
ISLAMOPHOBIA IS REAL - WE SHOULD ALL HAVE IT.
Also in the Gerrt Wilders case, with the exception of being compared to Nazis, the film Fitna could easily have been made by muslims as a film showing how proud they are of their accomplishments and how well they fulfill scripture. If you could go back in time and present Fitna as an Islamic Propoganda film what would the Islamic community of the Netherlands have to say then? Would the "Moderate" Muslims speak out and say "That's not us!"
I don't think so.
A thought:
http://freemendo.typepad.com/undaunted/2010/02/hereabout-bombs-beng-surgcally-mplanted-nto-bombers----the-thing-with-this-type-of-device-is-that-the-most-likely-detonator.html