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Friday, September 30, 2005
Profiling
One hundred percent of the successful terrorist attacks on commercial airlines for 20 years have been committed by Arabs. When there is a 100 percent chance of being hijacked by an Arab Muslim Extremist, it ceases to be a profile. It's called a "description of the suspect." -- Ann Coulter, from Slander: Liberal Lies About The American Right
Your Curmudgeon will concede that his customary lucubrations are noteworthy principally for their anfractuosity. But that's why he admires wordsmiths such as Miss Coulter, who cut cleanly to the heart of any subject they address...and why he can't help but celebrate Andrew McCarthy's latest:
CAIR, the AMC, and other Islamic groups, the Star Ledger informs us, are voicing “long-standing fears of unequal treatment” for Muslims. Of far longer standing, however, is the fact of life that there is no greater iniquity than treating as equal things which are not. In the consideration of modern terrorism, Muslims and others simply do not stand as equals.The interest groups would undeniably have a point if the global scourge of terrorism cut across sectarian lines. Broadly speaking, though, it does not. The vast majority of the terrorism committed in the world, and virtually all of the terrorism targeted against the United States for the past dozen years, has been spawned by radical Islam.
This is obviously why the interest groups are trying mightily to alter the underlying assumptions of counterterrorist theory. Terrorism, they insist, is a reaction to political conditions; it is not doctrinal in nature. But this conflates context with cause. On the same account, one could argue that, say, mafia racketeering is an economic phenomenon, unrelated to any sort of criminal culture.
[...snip...]
In the current enforcement environment, we are trying to prevent acts of terror from occurring, rather than contenting ourselves with prosecuting after the murderous fact. That approach cannot -- cannot -- rationally be put in place without developing a profile on likely terrorists. Being a Muslim is an unavoidable part of that profile.
There is nothing wrong with profiling a known, ongoing threat. In fact, people charged with protecting us would be irresponsible if they failed to do so. Moreover, just as we know the militants are Muslims, so, too, we know that the vast majority of Muslims are not militants. There is consequently a lot more to the equation than just religious affiliation.
Brilliant. But McCarthy's point, as lucidly developed as it is, will only convince those who care about such trivialities as facts and logic. They who reflexively protest against "profiling" as such are unconcerned with those things. Your Curmudgeon suspects them to be unconcerned with the protection of innocent lives, as well.
But what is a profile, exactly? Is it, as Ann Coulter wrote, just "a description of the suspect?" Not quite. If we could describe the suspect in all his particulars, we'd be engaged in a manhunt, not an anti-terrorism campaign. Rather, a profile is an attempt to tabulate the differentiating characteristics by which persons bent upon some unlawful act might be distinguished from the larger mass of humanity, and stopped before they can do it. The profiler arrives at his list of differentiators in the obvious way: by pondering the similarities among those known to have committed the act in the past.
Differentiators will occur among both criminals and non-criminals, which is why the profiler never contents himself with two or three of them. He always seeks the most complete and inclusive list of differentiators he can amass. The longer and surer the list, the better is the chance that the profile really will separate the sheep from the wolves. But conversely, he would never dream of omitting a differentiator from his profile just because it's known that some innocents possess it -- particularly not when that characteristic correlates near-perfectly with the threat behavior.
Consider that the loudest voices against the development of a usefully inclusive profile for the typical terrorist all share their most significant differentiator with that profile: they're all Muslims. More, they're all Muslims who oppose the American liberalization initiatives in the Middle East and have condemned all American interaction with that region as equivalent to a "new Crusade." Finally, among them we can find no small number of persons who actively defend, and may reasonably be suspected of assisting, the deeds of terrorists in other parts of the world (e.g., Israel and Iraq), but whom the larger group accepts and defends uncritically.
Would you get onto a plane with such a person? Your Curmudgeon wouldn't. At any rate, not without his Beretta.
Our law enforcement and anti-terrorism agencies have been savagely thrashed for profiling in the past, largely because of their profiles' emphasis on race. This was and is ludicrous. Violent and property crimes are heavily race-biased; why should law enforcement profiles ignore it? But the mandarins of racial privilege have succeeded at employing Americans' unearned guilt over slavery and the racism of past generations to neuter that approach to common crime. The sensitivities they evoked play no small part in our difficulties at admitting, even to ourselves, that the terrorist profile should emphasize affiliation with Islam.
- The perpetrator of the next terrorist act in Iraq will be a Muslim.
- The perpetrator of the next terrorist act in Israel will be a Muslim.
- The perpetrator of the next terrorist act in Europe will be a Muslim.
- The perpetrator of the next terrorist act in Britain will be a Muslim.
- ...and the perpetrator of the next terrorist act in America will be a Muslim.
You could bet your life on it.
Comments
There is a fair chance that the next terrorist act commited in america will be by a radical anarchist, anti-capitalist, enviro-whacko, or pseudo-christian fundamentalist rather than a muslim.
Other than that, damn skippy bubba.
Posted by Chris Byrne on 09/30/2005 at 10:57 AM
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