Lets all go ahead and put the United States back in the 19th century! Wake up…not all terrorists are Arabs, and the vast majority of Arabs living in the United States are not terrorists. This is all fine and good until another white guy comes along and blows something up (does ANYBODY remember Tim McVeigh??)
The war on terrorism is much more a moral war than one of fighting. The only way we’re going to win is by being morally superior to them and sticking to that.
Moreover, as Colbert King points out in a recent Washington Post column, there is no reliable way of superficially distinguishing between young male West/South/Southeast Asian or African Muslim fanatics and dark-skinned young males of any other ethnicity or religion:
The “give Grandma a pass” reasoning, placing certain groups automatically in a “safe” category, is also foolish. For one thing, there is no reason that elderly women, for example, can’t choose to be suicide bombers. For another, there is no reason to suppose that a fanatical young man who’s willing to blow up himself and dozens of other people wouldn’t also be willing to plant a bomb in his grandma’s bag and send her, or accompany her, to blow them up instead.
Attempts at demographic profiling in screening for potential terrorists aren’t going to accomplish anything significant beyond pissing off a whole bunch of law-abiding Muslims and a whole bunch of non-Muslim black and Latino men. Let’s stop wasting time and resources on these silly proposals and instead focus on helping law enforcement intelligently and effectively track down and catch genuine criminals.
Assemblyman Dov Hikind should be ashamed of himself for introducing this proposal. Personally, I’m particularly revolted that a Jewish Democrat thinks this is a good idea. Not to go all Godwin or anything, but doesn’t the prospect of labeling a particular ethnic/religious group uniquely dangerous and set aside for special scrutiny set off any little alarm bells in his mind?
The statement so nice it needs to be said twice.
I dunno.
How many elderly women have “chosen” to be suicide bombers in the past? If there’s “no reason” for them not to choose this, then why have there been so few, if any, of them?
What evidence do you have that suicide bombers are willing to blow up family members? How many have done so in the past? Also, Krauthammer makes a good point that if the suicide bombers have to change tactics, that is a good thing, since it slows them down. If every would-be suicide bomber had to not only get his grandmother to accompany him on his mission but also be willing to blow her to bits, that would significantly reduce the number of suicide bombers, would it not?
I doubt it. Remember, in places like the US and UK, we’re not talking about a steady stream of frequent suicide bombings as in Iraq or pre-ceasefire Sri Lanka, where there are so many recruits that deterring some of them would have a significant effect. Islamist terrorist attacks in Western countries have long pre-operational lead times, and the planners have a lot of room to develop strategies and backups.
And there seems little doubt that terrorist fanatics are perfectly willing to use acquaintances or even friends and family members as “mules” who carry explosives without realizing that they themselves will be blown up with them. IIRC, it’s even being debated whether some of the London bombers themselves may have been “mules”.
As for whether women can be suicide bombers: heck yeah. About 30–40% of the suicide bombings by the Tamil Tigers were carried out by women, and the practice of using female bombers is spreading among Islamist terrorists. If you want to rule out only elderly women, on the grounds that they have very seldom been involved in such acts, that’s a valid reason for ruling out elderly men as well. And again, that completely ignores the possibility that such a person could be used as a dupe or a mule.
In short, the probability of any randomly chosen person, from any age level or ethnic group, being a suicide bomber is so minuscule that it’s silly to waste time figuring out how we could tweak our random screening procedures to make that probability a tiny bit higher. The only people who have genuinely high probabilities of being suicide bombers are the ones holding a secret meeting to discuss plans for a bombing attack, and those are the people I want law enforcement to concentrate on finding and catching.
You are missing the point. No one is saying it never happens. However, if it adds one (or better yet, several) more layers of complexity to the process, then it surely will reduce the number of incidents. We can never eleminate suicide bombings or other terror attacks, but we can do things to reduce their frequency.
I’m not necessarily arguing in favor of racial profiling, but if you argue against it, at least use arguments that have a basis in reality. I remember an Israeli inettigence guy who was interviewed once and he said the differnce between the US and Isreal is that US looks for bombers while Israel looks for bombs. There’s probably a lot of wisdom in that approach, and I expect that it includes at least some form of progfiling, although perhaps not how we might institute it. We seem to have a knee-jerk reaction in the US that “racial profiling” = bad. I find the civil rights argument against most forms of profiling to be a more compelling one.
Frankly, I think the whole idea of random searches on subways is ridiculous, and while adding an element of racial profiling might make it a wee bit more effective, even then it’s probably still a waste of time. But it doesn’t serve the argument to try and pretend that racial profiling doesn’t work, especially if the argument comes down to the idea that it’s no good to make the terror process much more complex for the would-be terrorist.
Keep that goal post steady, please. We’re talking grandma, not young women. And I would agree that age is a reasonable criteria for both sexes.
But where is the evidence that racial profiling would/does work?
And assuming that random searches on the subways does deter suicide bombers, they would just move elsewhere. Buses, trains, department stores. So now you are having to do to random searches everywhere.
As rayh says, what’s your evidence that it does work? Even if it does, what’s the evidence that the alleged “wee bit more” effectiveness you claim it provides is statistically significant with regard to the incredibly low probability that any randomly selected person on a subway is a suicide bomber? And finally, even if there were a statistically significant increase in screening effectiveness, what possible way is there to apply racial profiling only to members of one ethnic/religious group and not to members of other groups who look like them?
Then we might have a legally valid case for it somewhere. Is there any civil-rights reason for prohibiting age discrimination when it comes to random security searches?
(Mind you, I think it would still be a stupid policy to implement, because it would take very little trouble, for example, for a young suicide bomber to impersonate an elderly person well enough to fool a busy security searcher and a crowd of inattentive subway riders.)
I don’t think “racial profiling” is a good idea. It’s hard to distinguish certain races, especially when we’re looking at several races that have a religion, Islam, has a commonality. Not to mention that randomly checking suicide bombers when they’re already in a crowded public area is a bad idea. This kind of random bag checking wouldn’t have made that big a difference in a London-style attack: Some or all of the bombers probably wouldn’t have been stopped and searched, and the ones that were stopped could have just blown themselves up right there.
And, of course, terrorists come in ALL colors. McVeigh wasn’t an Arab.
I propose that we only search subway riders whom we know have a history of suicide bombing.
I don’t know of any data, but clearly if you think that the searches are meaningful (I’m not sure they are), then narrowing your target group can only make them more effective as long as you are not missing targets. That’s the key. I think it’s reasonably to focus the searches on men and women between the ages of 16 and 40. Add to that some criteria like “has a backpack” or “wears bulky clothes” and you might increacse the efficiency even more. At what point it becomes useful to add an element of “racial profiling”, I don’t know, but I don’t think it should be dismissed out of hand because “it doesn’t work”. Do we know that “it doesn’t work”?
That would make the method less precise, but would not make it completely imprecise. You seem to be making the objection that if it doesn’t work perfectly, it shouldn’t be done.
So in addition to randomly searching passengers who may or may not be planning to commit a terror attack that may or may not happen, we are going to target people because of the color of their skin?
I know this is a cliche and all, but maybe the terrorists really have won. We are giving up our ideals in return for a false sense of security. This ain’t good kids.
Harbowolf:
There are two distinct qustions being discussed. 1) Does racial profiling work and 2) is it constitutional? I’m unconviced that that the answer to #1 is “no”, and I’m uncomfotable with a “yes” answer to #2, although I’d like to hear from some of our legal experts on that matter. If you want to argue against racial profiling, I think the constitutional approach is the way to go. Otherwise it’s simply a policy matter, and I’d bet that it works in some case and doesn’t in others.
I wonder what’s going to happen when the terrorists start getting skin bleaching and hair coloring to fool the profilers. Will beauty salons be required to register customers, or will we simply classify Vidal Sassoon as aiding and abetting terrorists? 
It’s funny how Middle Easterners are considered to be in a different race from whites now. 9/11 changed everything, didn’t it?
Sorry, got on my soapbox for a wee moment. :o
I’ll say that I think that racial profiling may be effective. At this point I don’t think that we have enough data to rule conclusively one way or the other. It may not be as effective given the program of random searches it’s attached to. I’ll let our resident legal eagles take on the constitutionality of it.
There are other concerns though. What is this going to do with regards to our standing with the rest of the world and Arab nations/extremists specifically? I imagine nothing good. This isn’t going to win us any friends and it’s not going to hurt Al Queda recruiting at all. Even bringing this up for a vote is a knock against us that we really don’t need.
Just because something may be effective does not automatically mean we should do it.
You’re being needlessly pedantic. “Racial profiling” got it’s name from targetting Blacks for certain crimes. Call it “Ethnic profiling” if you want. Same dif.
I don’t know, but I see another arrest for Michael Jackson in the near future.
[QUOTE=rayh]
But where is the evidence that racial profiling would/does work?
QUOTE] Israeli flights.
Would this be the first law allowing for the different treatment of people based on their races since Jim Crow? There’s a step in the right direction…
Suppose the law gets passed, and racial profiling is allowed against middle easterners. When people who only look middle eastern get searched more often, will this be a violation of law? Or will the law actually say that people who look m.e. are fair game?