The American Spectator

Reader Mail

The Eyes Have It

8.23.06 @ 12:01AM

COURAGE DISPLAY
Re: Yale Kramer's Mother Streep in the Park:

Great article by Yale Kramer!
-- Elaine Helberg
Boca Raton, Florida

THREAT PROFILING
Re: Jed Babbin's Profiling and Fascism:

Sir, Mr. Babbin's article on Profiling and Fascism is an excellent article. But a word about "profiling," not racial but "threat profiling" based on accumulated knowledge, experience and awareness that is often overlooked by those making the charge against profiling. First off, everyone who is aware of their daily environment profiles! We look at most everyone we encounter and make decisions based on what we see and what our experience tells us, hence I walk out of coffee shops that are less than clean and turn my head in all directions when walking alone at night. Profiling a car salesman will help us decide to buy or not buy that new car and certainly a "used" car. As a former customs inspector, I learned from my colleagues which arriving international flights were high risk for drugs while others that were high risk for other types of smuggling, such as expensive clothes and jewelry. The number of seizures for violations of various laws were indicative of the experience and intuitive nature of many, but not all inspectors and warranted the additional threat profiling.

Over a period of decades, I have been profiled in a number of foreign countries and when returning to the U.S. I understand the basis and rationale for most of the instances and chalk the remainder up to inexperience or possibly poor information. Recently I watched security in the departure area of the international airport in Vienna take aside a non-descript passenger because he had over a half dozen bottles (plastic with the seals broken) of what appeared to be water. I could not hear the conversation but there appeared to be no legitimate reason for carrying on to the aircraft large, two-liter bottles of water in used bottles. While the man did not seem out of the ordinary, with the exception of the water bottles, the security people were profiling for safety and security. On a flight from Amman where the majority of the passengers were of middle eastern appearance, I noted two male passengers sitting across from me leaning towards one another to discuss some issues in very low tones. They stopped their conversations whenever the flight attendants passed by. Several times they looked directly at me and I assumed they were profiling me. Nothing happened but I did not believe I was profiling on a racial basis but on a behavioral basis.

From observing the TSA officers at several major U.S. international airports, I believe some of these officers are aware of their surroundings and other are working by rote. I know of an instance where a sworn U.S. federal officer with a USG ID and a U.S. diplomatic passport arriving in the U.S. and connecting to another city was taken in for an extended examination despite his showing his various U.S. credentials. This is screening by numbers and will not lead to a higher level of experience and intuition being developed by TSA personnel. Threat profiling is not racial profiling and while not 100 percent accurate, it certainly is more effective than the type of screening I have experienced since 9-11.
-- WJM
Vienna, Austria

French-speaking Belgians are about 40 percent of total population of 10.5 million, or 4.2 million -- over double the 2 million cited in article.

I think previous generations of Belgian leaders were savvier than today's. They knew how to pay some lip service to their French cousins while keeping them at arm's length at same time.
-- T. Garvey

Tell it, Jed. Keep telling it. Don't ever stop telling it. Maybe someday our citizenry will wake up and listen to you.
-- Ken Shreve

WORK STUDY
Re: Neal McCluskey's Subsidy Economics 101:

Maybe the baby boomers' children can take their tax breaks and get their government subsidies too. All they have to do is figure out how to convince China to keep subsidizing our debt.
-- Michael Roush

SITE OUT OF MIND
Re: Ralph R. Reiland's Faith-Based Terrorism:

Mr. Reiland is, of course, quite right that the phenomenon that we call the Islamic Jihad is not a new thing. I did indeed start a while ago. Mr. Reiland's mistake is in not correctly dating the onset of this current iteration of the jihad. I would recommend that people look into this website.

This site well give chapter and verse on this latest jihad and its creator, and show that it dates back to approximately 90 years ago. If you do not wish to go back that far, then you simply must go back to the takeover of our embassy in Tehran in 1979, or to the killing of the Israeli athletes at the Olympics in Munich seven years earlier. Incidentally, the site listed above was created, and is maintained. by truly moderate Muslims, not Zionists. Another site documenting the Islamic Jihad's birth, continuance, and intentions is this. Again, this is not a Zionist web site.

Folks, the point is that this Islamic Jihad is not new, but we, in the West, have been doing our best to hide it from view for many reasons and for many years. It is past time to get serious before Victoria's Secret installs a full line of burkas.
-- Ken Shreve

Letter to the Editor

topics:
John McCain, Economics, Religion, Islam, Environment, Law, Supreme Court, Military, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Israel, NATO, North Korea, Communism, Fascism