After the shoe bomber tried to blow up a plane with a bomb in his shoe we all had to start taking off our shoes to get on a plane. Now some terrorist tried to blow up a plane with a bomb in his underpants, so things are bound to get pretty interesting at the airport strip, er I mean security checkpoint.

The first time I flew after 9-11 I was waiting at the gate for my flight and some middle eastern guy was angry and screaming into his cell phone in some middle eastern dialect, Across from him were two kooks from Berkley dressed up in Afghan tribal costumes. They were not Afghans. They were white as rice. For some bizzare reason they just thought it would be clever to dress up that way. So when it came time to pick two people to take behind the screen for a full search who do you think the officials in charge of our security chose? Thats right, an 80 year old white woman with a walker and a 70 year old black man with a cane. I swear to God it happened just that way. We may not be safe, but at least we aren't profiling. Heaven forbid!

wow, this really is one of those issues where people get all bent out of shape and go on and on about 'them darn liberals without really doing any thinking.

racial / religious profiling is stupid not because it hurts peoples' feelings but because it virtually ensures the terrorists will get through security the easy way.

behavioural profiling (i.e. watching for people with no baggage, one way flights, always checking the position of the security cameras, etc...) is another matter entirely and is quite successful.

but lets talk about this racial / religious profiling that everyone seems to want so badly. First, lets entirely do away with the notion of profiling based on religion. Again, not because its unfair, but because its ineffective. Contrary to popular belief, you cannot tell a person's religion by looking at them (unless of course someone was wearing religious paraphernalia which you can be sure the terrorists would not be doing if such things were being screened for). Can you tell an Israeli Jew from a Syrian Muslim if they are both wearing the same clothes? How about an Indian Hindu from a Pakistani Muslim? or a Vietnamese Buddhist from a Singaporean Muslim ?

of course you can't! these people have essentially the same ethnic background yet practice different religions because of their culture. Once we've established that you can't base your determination of religion on looks, then we're essentially down to having screeners ask passengers "what is your religion?"..... and if your think Al Quidea operatives are going to answer that little question truthfully then I've got some ocean-front property in Montana I'd like to sell you...

Now that we've thrown out religious profiling we're left with racial profiling. We now come the the six million dollar question... which races are you going to target?

I can practically hear you yelling from here you're so excited. "Middle Easterners!!" well that's great and all, but that wouldn't have stopped the Christmas Day bomber, he was African. "then add Africans too!" you yell, ok, but what about Jose Padilla?, the "dirty bomber", he was hispanic, so you wouldn't have caught him either. "So add hispanics!!" you yell even louder. What about al qaeda's vast networks in Singapore and Malaysia? I guess we've got to add Asians to the list too.

well, that's just about everyone except whites, but wait, aren't I forgetting something? that's right! Richard Ried (the "shoe bomber") and John Walker Lindh (the "American Taliban") we're both white as the driven snow. I guess we've got to add whites to the list too.

You see? without even looking up any intelligence reports, just going off the major terrorist attempts of the last decade, we've shown you'd have "profile" against middle easterners, Africans, Asians, Hispanics and Whites. That's pretty much everyone, and pulling everyone aside for extra screening kind of defeats the point of profiling in the fist place.

you see what I mean? if you just take a few quick seconds to rationally think these things through, things aren't as simple as the media may lead you to believe.

Even Obama is finally admitting that we are at war, and during war we do have to take some extra precautions. I certainly hope this won't go as far as it did in World War II but we need to stop the making people feel bad PC BS.

"Not all Muslims are terrorists, but nearly all terrorists are Muslims." This from an Arabic country's intelligence official, defending his country's use of profiling. Makes sense? Does to me

Well stated, ken.mcloud. The terrorists are not completely stupid and would likely try to place the bomb on the least likely looking person possible. I'd hate to have the job of figuring out who was gonna explode just by looking at them. Granny could pack all kind of explosives in the frame of her walker and the fanatics have shown that they won't flinch from using a child. I don't have an answer, we just have to keep doing the best we can and that's always going to involve making some mistakes and making some people angry.

In the example cited the outlandish BEHAVIOR was ignored for fear of being accused of racial profiling. Political correctness will be the cause of death when the kooks succeed in killing this great nation. If the outlandish behavior had been on the part of the old lady and old man then yes check them out. But do not avoid checking out the ones with the wierd behavior because they fit an ethnic profile. Political correctness is seldom correct and because of it common sense is no longer common.

When a cop is any good at what he or she does their gut tells them that something is suspicious and at first it is often something that can't even be put into words. If to travel by air means you sacrifice your right to be free from unreasonable search then that suspicion needn't be put into words. Political correctness gets in the way of good police work and removing a threshold of reasonable cause removes the need for good police work. Isralies do not just pick two to search because they are civil servants and thats their quota. They pick out the right ones to search and even interrogate regardless of how many and without regard to any political correctness. And if you for a moment think that the Kool Aid drinking liberals will ever allow that cancer called political correctness be excised from the body of America then you too have had a sip.

Very well stated Dave

It's better to check the shoes of The newly weds or the Florida pair with their 4yr old girl, 7 yr old boy and Granma with her secret stash in her walker on a trip to Disney. With a little common sense, a fast background check on every booking it should be easy to decide who to search.

libertyfirst, +1 to you, I agree completely. It's ludicrous to put American's lives, or anyone's life at risk to protect someone's "feelings". PC is BS, we're at war, and our enemy is too cowardice to attack our military, so they attack our citizens. If you're middle-eastern, and can't get over the fact that right now, you're gonna have to put up w/a little scrutiny, here's an idea, FIND A NEW COUNTRY TO CALL HOME!! Doubt you'll get many takers on that offer.

Dave-

When we get right down to it, it appears that the argument you are making, without quite explicitly stating it, is the following:

"security personnel should not be prevented from screening a suspicious individual on the grounds of that individual's race or religion"

No one is disagreeing with this point, at least I am personally not. you're having a non-argument.

It's also important to realize that the above stance is an anti-racial-profiling stance, not a pro-racial-profiling stance, since only screening white people is in effect, racially profiling against white people. Its ineffective for the exact same reason that profiling against any other race is.

this is really not the argument the other folks are making though, they are saying:

"People of certain races/religions should receive more thorough security screenings than people of other races/religions"

THIS is the argument I am firmly disagreeing with. If I summarized your argument correctly at the beginning of this post then I actually firmly agree with you.

... scary thought that I might be in agreement with a kool aid drinking liberal such as yourself!

Well first off the panty bomber got on the plane outside of this country,and its common that airports in other countries who dont have any problems with terrorist blowing up their buildings would not have the security in place that US Airports do.This airport missed 3 top signs that this fool was a terrorist stooge,
1.he paid cash for a oneway ticket....
2.he had no baggage with him at all not even a carry on bag...
3.he had a muslim name.....
Now you may think that #3 is not a reliable way to identify a suspected terrorist,and that alone is true,but when you combine #1&2 with #3 it should have raised suspicion enough to have this person searched......But #2 alone should have raised atleast some suspicions,because it is not normal for a person to take a flight from one country to another without at least a carry on bag of some type.....And I agree that some of the searching and detaining done by airport security seems a little wacked in the head at times and I believe it is partly based on racial/religous profiling....
Because 2 years ago 6 of us went to Alberta,Canada from Baltimore Washington International airport for 2 weeks of bear hunting...while we were standing there waiting to go through the metal detector and have our baggage checked and all that crap..A hindu guy about 40 and possibly his wife/daughter about 19 were there,they both had small carry on bags and he was wearing a turban on his head,and they were argueing about something in their own language and she was not too happy with him,they were not loud or anything but airport security came and took them both to the side and then lead them away from everyone else probly to be searched/questioned just for being dressed like hindus and speaking arabic or whatever it is they speak...A rather ignorant Man and his idiotic wife turned to me and the man said ""I hope they check them darn muslims real good"" his wife said "yea I am glad to see they know just who to detain""
You should have seen the complete look of suprise on both their faces when I said ""well they took away the hindus for argueing and passed the 6 of us up who each have guns and big hunting knives in our baggage and we will be getting on a plane"....they actually thought I was kidding until we got up to the security station and I told the security officer I was going to canada on a bear hunt and he said "OH OK do you have your guns with you and are they in a locked case? we need to check the weapons and see your registrations for each weapon""...they checked and then took our gun cases on to be loaded on the plane...and we left leaving those two idiots looking suprised and a somewhat fearful that 6 white guy could walk into an airport with firearms...LOL

Good post Sourdough a plus one for you.

You bet I profile at airports,train stations and bus depo's!!! Better alive than dead!!!The airports need to keep profiling too!