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When it comes to airline terrorism - they have all been men of Middle Eastern descent.
As the saying goes, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
A profiling effort that only includes a few members of a particular racial/religious group known to use airliners to commit terrorist acts simply ignores other racial/religious groups who may chose to do so in the future, perhaps even encouraged by the success of the other racial groups' efforts. Might even encourage those terrorists to recruit people who do not fit the profile, at least as far as race/country of origin are concerned.
How would we stop another Richard Reid? He was born in England and grew up in South London, a British citizen since birth. His dad was Jamaican, which isn't middle eastern either. I've read that the Nigerian wished to follow Richard Reid's example - perhaps we are seeing a shift from the typical middle eastern use of airliners to commit terrorist acts, to a broader group of like minded people who cannot be easily profiled.
If we are at the stage where we must profile, then recent history tells us that we will only be eliminating a portion of the risk if our focus is only on people from the middle east. You could argue that is a good start, but if we are going to go down this profiling path, it certainly can't be the only profiled group if we hope to be effective at preventing airline terrorism.
P.S. reflecting more broadly on this, the Beslan school terrorists in Russia were not from the middle east either, though they were muslims. While they did not use airliners to commit their immoral acts against school children, I wouldn't want them to show up on an airline flight with me with bad intent in their hearts. Yet with this middle eastern based profiling focus, they would slip on undetected.
Last edited by sugarsugar; 01-09-2010 at 02:58 PM..
You said middle eastern descent. Only a quarter of the Muslims in the world live in the middle east. Indonesia alone has more Muslims than the entire Middle East.
You said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greatday
When it comes to airline terrorism - they have all been men of Middle Eastern descent.
You were wrong. The last one was Nigerian, which is not in the Middle east.
I too have gone further afield on this than the OP indicated - according to the title, the debate was regarding racial/ethnic profling.
Not religious profiling.
But hey, I can generalize too! Seeing how "a majority" of terrorists are from the middle east and ARE RELIGIOUS, then perhaps we should have everyone provide their religion card at the gate.
I think this would really trouble the christians and jews. But hey! you never know when you'll stop a christian or jew from blowing up a plane.
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