Guest Editorial Columnist
Florida Jewish News- 12/9/2005

It’s so unbelievably simple. If a lion escapes from the zoo, you don’t go looking for giraffes and elephants.
We know the exact demographic of those who have so dramatically threatened the safety of our air travel in the past and who have sworn to do so again in the future; 17-40 year old Muslim males of Mid-Eastern descent. That being said, to delay the travel of others: the elderly Black woman, the Asian infant, the balding White male; would all seem superfluous and provocative. Nevertheless, we grumble and bear it as we remove our shoes, hats, and belt and dutifully show our unmentionables to complete strangers.
Why is it then, that the loudest legal backlash from all of this, claiming violation of civil rights, seems to come not from elderly Black women, Asian infants, or balding White men, but from those who look like, sound like, pray like, and hail from the same countries as those whose sole stated purpose is to deprive everyone else of their much more important UNALIENABLE rights –of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Somewhere between McCarthy-ism and carelessness lies the very prudent act of ‘profiling’ a potential threat using the set of clear and consistent descriptors shared by every single one of the terrorists. To ignore this, and instead train our scrutiny on a Mexican toddler sleeping in her bassinet simply because she was the 28th person in line is an example of this carelessness.
It reminds me of the old joke that has a man who lost his wallet on 1st Street searching for it on 3rd Street because the light is better there. This inane logic, romanced by an absurdly blind obsession with political-correctedness, has peaceful travelers undressing at airports, worried that they’ll miss their flights.
When a lawsuit is filed because a 17-40 year-old Muslim male of Mid-Eastern descent has taken umbrage with having to disrobe along with the rest of us, then the terrorists stop being furious for just a moment and giggle their grenades off at how politically easy we make it for them to hurt us.
They laugh at how we err on the side of their inner-children over our actual children.
They laugh knowing that when they slaughter hundreds of fellow Muslims while they are praying in a Mosque or playing in the street, the media backlash will pale in comparison to what they can stir up when a U.S. Soldier mistreats a Quran (which are also desecrated when a Mosque explodes, go figure that.)
They laugh knowing that if they ever went back to Huffman Aviation School to ask for the security deposit back from Mohammed Atta’s dorm room, they would get it, and probably with free legal representation.
Very simply, they laugh at how easy it is for them to repeatedly exploit the loophole created when our national conscience won’t understand that ‘An ounce of prevention weighs far more than a pound of political-correctedness’; and that loophole is just large enough for a bomb-laden 17-40 year old Muslim male of Mid-Eastern descent to pass through, completely unoffended.

 

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