I feel a little better about the airline industry today.
In a move that showed they value passenger safety over public relations, AirTran removed a Muslim family from a flight leaving DC’s Reagan airport yesterday after other passengers overheard the family discussing safest places to sit on the plane.
We live in a post 9/11/2001 world. A world in which acts of terrorism are in the news every day, and nearly every act of terrorism is perpetrated by radical Muslims. Muslim terrorists have shown they have the stomach to use women and children in their bloody schemes.
AirTran and every other airline must act on whatever evidence they have to protect their passengers, even when it means profiling and refusing to serve innocent persons. Muslims who take issue with this reality should denounce and sue the radical Muslims who built their reputation, not the people trying to protect themselves from the terrorist’s plots.
CNN -
Atif Irfan said federal authorities removed eight members of his extended family and a friend after passengers heard them discussing the safest place to sit and misconstrued the nature of the conversation.
Irfan, a U.S. citizen and tax attorney, said he was “impressed with the professionalism” of the FBI agents who questioned him, but said he felt mistreated when the airline refused to book the family for a later flight.
AirTran Airways late Thursday said they acted properly and that the family was offered full refunds and can fly with AirTran again.
“AirTran Airways complied with all TSA, law enforcement and Homeland Security directives and had no discretion in the matter,” the company said in a prepared statement.
Update: A reader who has taken issue with my opinion has commented that I am a “paranoid bigot.” I have revised my post with italics to make clear whom I believe to be responsible for the majority of terror attacks.
There is a difference between Muslims and radical Muslims. Unfortunately, airline employees don’t have a detector for that difference and must use their best judgment as a guide. Again, kudos to AirTran.
Others blogging on this topic: HotAir.
Subscribe to Jane’s daily email.
Subscribe to Jane Q. by RSS Feed.
8 Comments
January 2, 2009 at 1:22 pm
That was the most paranoid and bigoted load of crap I ever read. Are you purposely trying to make Republicans look bad?
January 2, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Update:
Airline Offers Apology Over Detained Muslim Passengers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010201695.html
Just as it should be
January 2, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Due diligence is not paranoia.
Recognition of obvious trends is not bigotry.
Unless you are a liberal, in which case, you are free to define your own terms as it pleases you.
January 2, 2009 at 5:32 pm
“We regret that the issue escalated to the heightened security level it did on New Year’s Day, but we trust everyone understands that the security and the safety of our passengers is paramount and cannot be compromised,” read a company statement.
That’s hardly an admission of guilt or overzealous bigotry.
January 2, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Since it was white males who committed the Oklahoma City bombing, and white males that committed Columbine and the other school shootings, should we profile white males? Or was Oklahoma City, the Unabomber, abortion clinic bombers and shooters (I am 100% pro – life by the way) not terrorism?
Look, our Constitution promises equal treatment under the law. If you conservatives and Republicans want to cast off equal treatment under the law, then at the very least quit whining about racial preferences and quotas.
January 2, 2009 at 9:57 pm
All of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists are Muslims. ALL of them – there are 23 on the list. (But I am sure you figure that that is because the FBI is Islamophobic and not because the 23 most dangerous terrorists-at-large are Muslims…)
http://www.fbi.gov/rss/terrorists.xml
Your ability to name some examples of domestic terrorism that weren’t driven by radical Islam, doesn’t mitigate the facts.
Call me what you will. It matters little.
The people tasked with keeping us safe are given a thankless job that sometimes requires unpopular judgments and (gasp!) profiling. You PC types will be the first ones crying foul when terrorists successfully execute one of their plots, complaining that no one did enough to stop it.
So glad you are enjoying my blog!
January 3, 2009 at 12:22 am
Much cliches, soundbites, and echo chamber vituperation, very little in the way of original thought. When I enter the political blogosphere (whether left or right) I identify very much with John Nash as depicted in “A Beautiful Mind” who was obsessed with finding an original idea. Then again, John Nash was insane. The fact that he was right about the communists did not change the fact that he was insane.
“Your ability to name some examples of domestic terrorism that weren’t driven by radical Islam, doesn’t mitigate the facts.”
Jane Q. Republican, the facts are that radical Islam has only been definitively linked to four major acts of domestic terror in this nation’s history or attempts thereof.
1. The Robert F. Kennedy assassination
2. The first World Trade Center bombing
3. The second World Trade Center bombing
4. The failed attempt to blow up an airliner by would – be shoe bomber Robert Reid.
That is four in our history. I am sorry, but there were more than that in Birmingham, Alabama in a single year during the civil rights movement. Do you know what they called Birmingham back then? BOMBINGHAM! To be more recent, there were far more abortion clinic bombings in the 1980s. Or to be more recent still, there were far more shootings at suburban high schools in the couple of years that led up to Columbine.
Now go back to that list of FOUR that I gave you. Do you want to know the best part? The best part is that profiling would have only prevented one of them.
1. Sirhan Sirhan: so he should not have been able to buy a gun? Or attend the RFK political rally? Also, please let us not forget about all of the assassinations and attempts that have been done in this country by white males. Malcolm X and RFK were the only major figures to have been assassinated by someone other than a white male.
2. Sorry, no way profiling would have prevented it.
3. Would racial profiling have prevented this? Yes. But so would have denying them visas. So would have denying them flight training. You see, profiling stops EVERYONE that fits a particular description: religion, appearance, dress, etc. There was no need to profile the September 11th hijackers because they were already on our FBI, CIA, NSA watch lists! When you have a specific suspect in mind, know that suspect’s name, what he looks like, where he lives etc. you don’t need to profile! All you need to do is go arrest a specific suspect! That was the case with virtually all of the September 11th hijackers, and it was also even the case with Atta. We knew that these people were violent extremists, and we let them into the country anyway. So the one case where profiling would have actually worked was the case where profiling shouldn’t have even been needed to begin with. So sure, go ahead and throw every Muslim off a plane because we allowed a bunch of known terrorists into our country and then gave them complete freedom of movement to train for, scout, and plan their act of terror over several years. And you can’t even blame Clinton for this, because Bush retained the very same FBI, CIA, NSA, INS etc. people who presided over this failure. Most of them are still in their posts to this day.
4. Robert Reid: the fellow is a convert. He is not an Arab but a black male. And he was not dressed as a Muslim either. He wasn’t even dressed as a black male hip – hop gang member thug wannabe. And guess what? The Muslim world brags on this fact. They brag about how they have successfully recruited and trained blonde haired blue eyed white people who look like they are from Iowa or Utah. Or failing that, they have a bunch of people who look like they could be Greek, Polish, or Italian. You know, the people from Kosovo or Chechnya … they are Europeans. Even a great many northern Iranians have European appearance.
Bottom line: there are 1 billion Muslims. A great many of them, indeed an increasing number, are not Arab and do not look Arab. The number of white (or at least white looking) and African/black Muslims is over 100 million. That is why profiling won’t work.
Also, with regard to this incident … do you honestly think that any terrorist would board a plane announcing his intentions to everyone so that he would be discovered? And – this is the best part – DO SO IN ENGLISH? Seriously, this was ridiculous. Richard Reid didn’t get on the plane talking about how he was going to blow it up and asking where he should sit in order to have the most chances of bringing the plane down. The guy got in his seat and didn’t say a word. The same with the September 11th hijackers. They weren’t talking about terrorism or blowing things up or killing people. They were acting completely natural right up until they started killing people. The same is the case with the suicide bombers in Israel, Iraq, and the Middle East. This idea that these people are running around wild eyed burning flags and screaming “death to America, death to the Jews!” before blowing themselves up is nuts. Why? Because these people want their missions to succeed. They don’t want to be caught before they get to carry out their mission, and they certainly don’t want everyone to run away so their casualty count is themselves and no one else. These people have been recruited to do their mission and they undergo weeks, months, sometimes even years of training and planning. They aren’t going to blow it by getting on a plane and asking each other out in the open – again in ENGLISH – how to take it down while dressed in full Islamic garb.
You conservatives like to say that we are in a war. I do not disagree. Instead, I say that this is the worst way in the world to fight it. Nonsense like this only harasses innocent people while allowing the real threat, people who are actually terrorists, to go about their business unbothered. Which, of course, is the same thing accomplished when police stop and search black or Hispanic families of five piled into the station wagon or SUV on their way to Disneyland on the expressway while allowing, you know, actual drug dealers to operate in broad daylight in the inner city a few miles away. A waste of time and effort that allows the real criminals to continue to operate unabated.
January 3, 2009 at 9:38 am
“Somewhere a line has to be drawn between profiling due to “perceived race, religion or national origin” and the common sense of profiling common terroristic characteristics for passenger safety. After all, profiling usually does include race, religion and national origin.”
I think this is the common ground we need to reach, yet no one knows quite how to get there.
Unfortunately, the conversation between the two sides (politcally correct and the politically incorrect) only serves to inflame and harden opinions. We’re all so interested in the sound of our own voices and our “rightness”, we can’t hear the parts of the opponent’s argument that actually make sense. I include myself here.
Thanks for the opposing point of view. I don’t agree, but I appreciate how you feel about this issue.
Jane Q.