I didn’t mean it that way because it was NOT fallacious. Ron is an expert in the very field we were discussing. Perhaps “lame” was a poor word, but what I enjoy about this board is having people express their opinions and scrutinizing those opinions and the thinking behind them. There is certainly nothing wrong with appealling to an authority on a subject, but it kind of ends the enjoyment of debate for me. Personally, I prefer the debates in which that doesn’t occur, the more philosophical type: “Here is my position, here is why I belive it is valid.” Otherwise, it can turn into either “yeah, but this expert says this.” or each time one is mentioned the other person has to go become an expert on “the expert”, in order to continue the debate.
Also, experts can be wrong.
As expert as he might be, I don’t think his statement is an accurate representation of how things are the U.S. today. I’m sure you would agree that one could describe people of various “shapes, sizes and ethnicities” that have not blown anything up in the U.S. The fact is, there is a definite pattern to the terrorists that have attacked us. I do not see how that can be denied. Now whether the information is usable, or effective, or “offensive” are other matters entirely. One is date. The other is application.
There is a saying used in the medical field: Common things are common…rare things are rare.
Since the great majority of terroristic killings over the years have been from Fundamentalist Muslims, these people would more likely be under suspicion for a terrorist crime than a Swede or a Norwegian.
If you can avoid political correctness for the answer to the following question, please answer it honestly: When you are on an aircraft in flight…do you feel more uncomfortable with 2 young men who look like individuals from the Arab lands more so than a grandmotherly woman who may well be from the midwest in the US?
These are not racist comments…to me it is just common sense.
Study the pictures of those said to be involved with 9/11.
Then look closely at the pictures of those marked as leaders of the insurgents you have been reading about.
This will give you some idea.
If you are still confused, let me know.
It goes without saying that many people resembling the above are gentle, peace-loving people…but unfortunately the people who resemble the above require a closer look than the blue-eyed blonde Dane or Grandma for example.
Yes, lets start out with you DMC…3 times in this thread you asked: How can you tell what a Muslim looks like?
And several posts have replied to you to look at the pictures of the culprits pictured as participants in 9/11 and al qaeda leaders. Nothing further need be said on that particular issue…so let it be… Believe what you like.
It is not a matter of “belief” to note that five of the nineteen participants in the WTC/Pentagon attacks could have come from any country in Northwest Europe, several others could have come from Central America, and a few more could “become” European simply by changing their shaving and hair-combing patterns. The man that the government fears so much that they are afraid to bring him to trial is a Hispanic/black U.S. citizen. An actual terrorist attack prior to the WTC/Pentagon attack was thwarted when security forces detained the Irish girlfriend of the bomb-sender. None of the photos I have seen of the London bombers strike me as particularly “Arab” looking.
I would agree that nothing further need be said–once we stop pretending that we can spot “terrorists” by studying widely varying skin tones and nose profiles with many overlaps to other peoples.
Suspicious behavior? Go for it.
Suspicious identification documents? Drag them in for examination.
Suspicious responses to questions from security personnel? Bring in a pro for further questioning.
Hauling every Eastern Sephardic or Mizrahim Jew or Costa Rican out of line to be grilled is not going to make us safer.
I’ve seen the pictures, and none of them appear to look alike, so I can’t really use them as a guideline. So, I ask again, what does a Muslim look like?
DMC and tomndebb: Kudos on your persistence of thought. We have been unable to convince each other. Thats what is so wonderful about the USA. Divergence of thought is part of our national fabric…As far as I am concerned, I’m putting this discussion to bed…
While I agree with MadSam in that this is gong to be one of those instances where the two sides will not agree, I would just like to point out that you are not representing your opponents’ position accurately. It has been opined, repeatedly on this thread, that racial profiling should be on the table as A factor, not necessarily THE factor. That it should be a weapon in the arsenal, to be used, or not, as circumstance dictates.
No one has offered that it should be used as a single tool, or that everyone who fits a particular physical profile be automatically “hauled out of line”. Conversely, it also does not mean that a platinum-haired, blue-eyed female would automatically be given a pass. For instance, if a middle-eastern looking male had on a tight tank top and had no bags, and the Scandinavian female had on a big, baggy overcoat, and it was August in New York, even those in favor of profiliing would say to let the man go and question the woman.
And to deny that the Islamiic Extremist terrorists who have done harm to the U.S. do, in fact, fall into a physical pattern defies the facts and, thusly, discredits your own argument. Whether or not that pattern is tight enough as to be actionable and effective is the valid question.
Your claim regarding safety is an opinion that may or may not be correct. It goes to the effectiveness of profiling, which can only be evaluated on a case by case basis. If white teenage gangs started to go on raping sprees in Harlem, not profiling white teenage males in the in the area would rightly be met with outrage, as it would be putting politically-correct ideology before crime prevention. Many other scenarios have been offered.
While I might agree that profiling for Islamic terrorists in London or New York using physical characteristics might not be recommended because of “effectiveness” I think it unwise that it should be taken out of the law prevention arsenal altogether.
I think it is safe to say that those who view racial profiling as being morally repugnant are never going to agree with those who think it should be an option. For them, “effectiveness”, or lack thereof, is a moot point. I respect their opinion, but from a moral standpoint we will never see eye to eye.
The proposed legislation from the OP put racial profiling alone on the table. Not as one tool of many. You yourself talked about “the enormous benefits of racial profiling”, so we’re simply countering that.
Then outline that physical pattern. I’ve been asking repeatedly, and all I get are references to known terrorists, who don’t all look alike by any stretch of the imagination. It would be like profiling Texans, and when I ask you what they look like, you say “The cast of Dallas”. What does an “Islamic Extremist terrorist” look like?
Once again, you’re speaking of looking for actual criminals who have committed a specific crime. There have been zero bombings of the New York subway system, so we’re not looking for people who have committed a crime, we’re looking for people who “might” commit a crime. If you have a criminal that has olive skin, is 6’2", bald, and has a tattoo on his left arm, I don’t really have any problems with limiting your search to people who meet that description. On the other hand, if you
think some para-military type might be pissed at the government, so you start searching all white people who rent trucks, I’ve got a problem with that.
I can find it morally repugnant, or even peachy-keen, without that having anything to do with the effectiveness of it, as I’ve demonstrated over and over again. I think Karl Rove is a repugnant bastard, but I also think he’s highly effective at what he does. I can think that full cavity searches of people who would happily take away my rights for their security is a wonderful thing, but that doesn’t make it effective.
I don’t see tha OP as doing that. I read it as allowing racial profiling to be used as a factor in narrowing down a suspect pool. I guess it is possible that one factor (racial or otherwise) might narrow down the pool effectively, but, as you well know having been an active participant in the thread, it has not been the point of the debate.
I hope (and think) you realize the ham-handedness of your analogy. Look, I know you’re infatuated with this one question, but, unlike the rest of your debate in this thread, it is childish. Your question has been answered, and then expounded upon. You might not like the answer, and the fact that I (or others) don’t think that your little semantic game is as cute ar worthy of time as you do, but thems the facts. The valid part of your question went to a problem of communication: how can we convey who should be profiled or not? And, as has been pointed out, pictures are often an effective–sometimes more effective–means of communication.
You never countered that argument. You simply repeated your question. If you simply refuse to accept the answer, fine, let’s move on.
If you choose to parrot your question, and put in bolder or larger type, that is your choice. If you have the time to do that, please copy my answer and paste it under your question in even bigger and bolder type. Then read it.
I know you do. And I respect your opinion. Please reread my previous posts in this thread if you’d like a response.
We’ve been through this. Please reread, while paying particular attention to the eighth word: “I respect their opinion, but from a moral standpoint we will never see eye to eye.”
DMC, I did not intend for my last post to re-ignite our debate (I was merely commenting on what tomndebb had posted. I think our debate has run it’s course. I understand your point of view and I think you understand mine. I’ve not offered anything to effectively sway you, and you have not offered anything to effectively sway me. I appreciate your pointing on Rafi Ron and I look forward to learning more about what he, and other experts, might think.
My only objection to the issue is to the foolish insistence that we will gain any effective benefit from wasting time looking at physical features that are misleading.
You said we could hand out photos and say to look for people who look like this.
OK. Here is Abdulaziz Alomari. I suppose you could make a case for him “looking Middle Eastern,” but if you handed out that photo at LAX, you’d have half the guys deboarding from Mexico and Central and South America getting stopped.
Are you going to eliminate him from the collection of photos? On what basis? He actually did participate in the WTC attack.
It is not effective to spend time investigating misleading clues.
I agree–obviously–that "it is not effective to spend time investigating misleading clues.
But, again you mischaracterize the “pro-profiling” position in this debate. I have stated numerous times that even if profiling were on the table, so to speak, that it would make no sense to do it if it couldn’t and wouldn’t result in creating a pool of suspects small enough to be useful/actionable.
And I do not thiink there are any proponents of profiling who hold their position because they think that it is in any way a guarantee of catching the bad guys. It’s a matter of odds: do you have a greater likelihood of catchiing the bad guys by concentrating on those of a certain profile, or by ignoring that profile. There are risks that have to be accepted either way.
If you spend more time and resources focusing on a particular group, you, by definition, are scrutinizing the population as a whole less, thereby increasing the possibiity that someone falling outside the profile will be able to commit the very crime you are tryiing to prevent.
Conversely, if you devout resoources to the whole population equally, you are, by definition, not focusiing efforts on that “pool” containing those who are most likely to commit a particular crime.
Now whether or not, that “pool” can be identified before hand is a question of circumstance, which will be different for each particular scenario.
I do not belive you can eliminate enough of the population for it to be useful.
Your resources are limited. Profiling will mean your resources are biased towards that profile, thereby you potentially miss people who will fall outside that profile. As I have posted previously not all the terrorists conveniently fall into the profile of “middle-eastern muslim”.
I do belive profiling is an excellent tool for use after a crime has been commited, but not to attempt to catch people before hand, again for reasons I have already posted.
I am not against the racial aspect of profiling per se, but if your profiling pisses off enough people then in may well prove counter-productive, producing more terrorists or people sympathetic to their aims, how may then provide shelter or aid to the actual terrorists.
Am I? I don’t see where. This thread was begun because a legislator explicitly sought ethnic profiling. I have raised no objections to profiling based on actions, words, or other indications of intent, so I am hardly opposing profiling in some blanket fashion. I have kept my objections focused on the specific area that will do the least good while making our OP’s legislator feel good.
If profiling by word and deed is a good thing, why continue to insist that we add an extraneous layer that will be counterproductive? Are you going to claim that waving pictures of two dozen quite disparate people at thousands of border agents and security personnel will give them magic powers to distinguish between Middle Eastern men and Mediterranean European men and Latin American men? When do you apply this ethnic litmus test? In New York where there are so many Middle Eastern men that during the first Gulf War the standing joke was that if Saddam called up the draft there would be no cabbies in the city? The problem with your argument that we are making the identification easier by narrowing the focus is that it works against us twice: We will spend an inordinate amount of timew looking for the wrong signals by focusing on misleading appearances and we will miss Irish girlfriends and Puerto Rican agents because they are outside the arbitrary bounds we have established. Focusing on a certain appearance is not simply a filter, it is a blinder–and the filter is inaccurate and the blinder is dangerous.
I wonder how much faster we might have caught Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad if the profiles had concentrated on the types of activities in which they might engage rather than noting that the profile of the serial shooter was that of a white male? How many times did they pass through police lines becuase the police were looking for a young white male?
Aside from you oversimplifying a discussion I had with DMC, this quote (above) suggests that proponents of profiling (or just me) would advocate such nonsense. If you take the trouble to reread the latter half of my threads you will see that I advocate no such nonsense. Only that profiling be “on the table” as a factor to be used by law enforcement–or not, as the particular situation dictates. I’ve said, repeatedly, that if a profile doesn’t reduce the pool os suspects to a small enough size as to be actionable, that it should NOT be used.
That is what I meant when I said you again had mischaracterized the “pro-profiling” contingent of this thread. Or, my position, anyway.
The proposed legislation would simply change racial profiling from illegal to legal. That is all. We have demonstrated why that’s stupid. You haven’t show why it’s not.
Nope, but feel free to elaborate.
No, it isn’t. In fact, I’ll repeat it again, as you still haven’t answered it. What does an “Islamic Extremist terrorist” look like?
The major fact surrounding this issue is that you have thus far refused to answer the question, and asking a question is not a semantic game, cute or otherwise.
Which features of those pictures should we use? Is it the structure of the nose, eyebrow density, size of the earlobe? What is it exactly in a picture that tells you that this is a potential terrorist?
I’ll keep repeating it until you actually answer it, as opposed to just figuratively waving various photographs of people, none of whom look like one another.
When you actually provide an answer, I’ll happily paste it after my question.
No, actually I don’t. It’s not that we’re on opposite sides of this, as my stance is the polar opposite of several people in this thread, none of whom I have an issue with. On the other hand, you have stated that racial profiling would bring “enormous benefits”, and when asked how you’d even outline the profiling procedures, you want to wave photos of a bunch of people around and not actually answer the question.
Truer words…
Half of the people in this thread have shown you the problem with choosing profiling targets based on photographs of known terrorists, and you’ve thus far ignored them all.
Let’s work with your photographs, so that the less educated amongst us can finally reach your level of enlightenment.
Here is Mohammed Atta, known terrorist. He seems to have a unibrow, a slight Kirk Douglas touch to the chin, and deep dimples. Is that what we’re looking for? If not, then what should we take away from this picture to help us? Heck, his picture on the right actually looks a lot like Scott Baio. Can we just make it easier on the police and have them stop all Chachi lookalikes?
Here is Richard Reid. He has an awfully large nose, a rather dorky looking expression, and what appears to be a pony-tail. Is it one of these features that tells us he’s a potential terrorist? If not, what should I burn in my memory from this one?
Here is Abdulaziz Alomari. He looks like he could be Rosario Dawson’s brother. She is Puerto Rican, Cuban, African American, Irish and Native American, and is a native New Yorker. Which one of those backgrounds do you think gives her the “look” we’re trying to find?
Here we have Marwan al-Shehhi. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker, or do the glasses mean he’s a terrorist?
So, what is it in those pictures I should be looking for?
However, I did not interrupt your discussion with DMC. I chimed in when MadSam made the claim
I certainly did not distort his position. You then, rather than distinguishing between any nuanced position you may hold and MadSam’s position, simply went back to asserting that ethnic appearance was a valid tool, even if among others. As I have pointed out on more than one occasion, and as DMC has further elaborated, using some vague notion of ethnic perception gives both too many false positives and too many false negatives. It actually distracts from the effort.
