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From: Jasper
Date: 9/26/01
Time: 9:57:54 AM
Charlie,
Of course you are right about protecting our country from enemy infiltrators who are using our lack of attention to basic national security concerns to do their infiltrating. But let's be clear that we are talking about ENEMY INFILTRATORS, not Arabic enemy infiltrators.
I find two things seriously wrong with narrowing the focus of terrorist suspects to Arabs.
!). It gives a free hand to terrorists of other ethnic persuasions to do whatever they will. Suppose, for example, some radical Jewish organization like the ones behind the assassination of Prime Minister Rabine decided that now is a great time to incite more hatred against Arabs or Moslems by carrying out a terrorist attack and blaming it on Arabs. This is what the Nazi's did to the Jews and one of the things that helped to put them firmly in control of the German government. We still have Nazis running around who could do the same thing.
2). Just as a terrorist is a terrorist, an American is an American and if we don't preserve the civil liberties of all Americans, even at some small - and I mean VERY small risk to ourselves, the terrorists win.
It's not hard for me to imagine some radical "Christian" group or "black" group seizing the opportunity to advance a racist agenda (in the name of national security) against Arab-Americans or Jewish-Americans for bringing on the 911 attacks. In the same way that it makes sense for a cop to look for an unusually tall male when he gets a report that a seven-foot male just robbed a liquor store on his beat, it makes sense for national law-enforcement authorities to follow up on leads to Arabs that they have reasonable grounds to suspect may be involved with the terrorists. Merely looking like someone of Middle Easter extraction is not reasonable cause for special police attention.
We can never forget the "special attention" we paid to Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor. That does not mean some Japanese-Americans were not sympathetic to Japan. It does not mean some German-Americans were not sympathetic to Hitler. It does not mean that some Italian-Americans were not sympathetic to Mussolini. But, in the case of German-American's and Italian-Americans, we did not begin with a presumption of guilt and pass judgments and laws that gave their ethnic groups special attention. In a free society, you just can't do shit like that.
There are nearly a million Arab-American's in the Detroit metropolitan area alone. Out of that number it would not surprise me that some of them are associated in thought or deed with the terrorists just as it does not surprise me that followers of white supremacists groups are mostly white and followers of black supremacist groups are mostly black. I say "mostly" because there are black people in America who hate black people as much as the worst white racist you can think of do (somehow Clarence Thomas keeps leaping to mind) and white people who have the same irrational hatred of white people as a group. When you start with ethnicity (as opposed to specific links to specific individuals) you make the job of identifying THE NEXT bad guy that much harder. It's gong to be hard enough as it is. --Jasper