Quote Originally Posted by Eclectic
Here is what I want to know: Why don't we just racially profile? It's not like we don't know who is going to blow us up. All of this "no water bottles" junk is a waste of time. Muslims are blowing up our planes. Does this mean that all Muslims are evil? NO. But the ones that are doing this are freaking Muslim. So take a closer look at the Middle eastern folks just to be sure. And the moderate muslims might just get fed up with the extremists if their rights were infringed upon. I know that if the government started bugging me, if I knew something I would be pointing fingers left and right. Why is this so taboo? It isn't a reduction of rights, its just plain obvious police work. This politically correct crap has just got to go. GAH!
The problem with that Eclectic is how do you profile someone by their relgious fundamentalism? Only check the baggage of Arabs? How will that prevent an Islamist fundamentalist from Indonesia, the country with the largest population of Muslims in the world, from bringing a bomb on a plane? What if it's a Shining Path terrorist from South America? Timothy McVeigh blew up several hundred people. He didn't even remotely look Middle Eastern to me. Do you see the problem? Terrorists can't be identified by what's on the outside. If our solution is to simply profile everyone of Middle Eastern descent, then what would stop Al Qaeda from using terrorists recruited from Indonesia or Sudan or somewhere else?

Then you have to consider our complete inability to distinguish between people effectively. Right after 911, who were the people most likely to be profiled as a threat and receive extra searching? Muslims? No. How? You can't tell a Muslim by appearance. The people most likely to get pulled aside in airports in the USA right after 911 were Sikhs and Hindus in traditional dress. That's right. We thought they looked like terrorists; so they were profiled as such. Meanwhile, an actual Islamist fundamentalist terrorist in a business suit with a passport naming him as Moshe Steinberg could have waltzed right past our security.

Unless and until we have the ability to read people's minds, we aren't going to be able to detemine who is or isn't a fundamentalist terrorist, or any other kind of terrorist. We certainly can't determine it based on race or national origin or the color of their tennis shoes.