Perhaps he intends to have them "marked" in such a fashion where they are recognizable?
The very concept of "profiling" has it's foundations in racial stereotyping, period. And, as the bulk of Muslims in the world aren't white, it's not a grand leap of logic to state that this process would have directives to primarily stop people that don't fit the traditional caricature of "American".
So how can you tell if someone is Muslim in order to put them through additional screenings and strip-searches in airports? Is there some sort of secret set of questions to be used just like in Blade Runner when they tried to find out who's a Replicant and who isn't?
But here's the part that causes me to question this style of information mining - why 18-28? Is that some secret age-window that terrorists can only attack from? Is that a special demographic that has been determined by intelligence agencies? Is there just a 10 year shelf life for suicide bombers in radical Islam?
I'm not sure if Julie Banderas is showing and actual honest response or if this is just concern-trolling or her attempting to inject some form of "balance" into the discussion. I'm guessing it's a healthy does of the former and just enough of the later for Fox execs to claim that this wasn't a practice endorsed or condoned by the network.
In the end, this is about stopping any person at the airport that has dark skin. Period.
A Blog Version Of The Inside Of My Head. The place where politics, film, the media, music, pop culture, and random topics collide in an orgy of neo-philisophical randomness that would make your mother scream.
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2 comments:
I listened to the clip, and I don't fully agree with you. I usually don't agree with this general either.
But he's right about a few things, this time. I think the US and the Western democracies are justified in protecting themselves (ourselves), and we would be foolish in ignoring what we know about the tactics being used against us.
Isn't it true that all of the suicide bombers, successful and foiled, have been men in a certain age group? I don't know if 18-34 men is exactly the right demographic, but it sounds right. There is a reason why armies consist mostly of young men: not only because of their physical attributes, but they can be convinced to kill more easily. I think it's probably provable, that older men and women have more appreciation of the complexities of modern politics, and are less likely to sacrifice themselves for a cause.
In our attempt to appear non-prejudiced, we often perform more exhaustive searches and interviews of people from other age groups, and that's a foolish waste of our resources.
He's right about possible "Israelification". Here's what I think he means.
http://www.thestar.com/iphone/news/world/article/744199---israelification-high-security-little-bother
I understand your concern, that this argument will appeal to racists and those who want to keep out "brown people". But that's not exactly what he said.
Of course, that's not the whole story and I wouldn't hire this general to be a janitor in my Homeland Security department. The Fox interviewer did a perfunctory job, but at least she did try to paint the rest of the picture, about what else needs to be done.
I think it is time to stop the fear. Terrorism works because of the fear. You stop terrorism not by killing all terrorist but by stopping the fear. Terrorist have kill almost no one in American since 9/11. Meanwhile more than one million Americans have died from the effects of cigarette smoking. The media should be giving the public the true that more likely to die from peanut butter than terrorism. They need to stop hyping terrorism because that helps the terrorist.
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