Wow, the left side of the blogosphere is up in arms over this story, about the woman who demanded to be let off a departing flight after becoming frightened by Arab passengers she thought were acting suspiciously. Witness this blog entry, titled “racist hysteric apologizes for targeting DOD-approved swarthy people,” and particularly the reader comments below the entry. It echoes the left’s reaction to Annie Jacobsen’s 2004 scare article, Terror in the Skies, Again?
Now, my credentials as a fellow-traveling lefty pinko are well established, but I can’t jump on this bandwagon. Who commits terrorism? Who hijacks airliners? A review of terrorist incidents and attacks, including airliner hijackings, shows it’s predominantly Muslim men, and Arab Muslim men in particular.
If you board a flight and see four of five Arab Muslim men in the cabin, are you seriously going to tell me the thought of a hijacking or some kind of suicide attack isn’t going to cross your mind? And if you see the Arab Muslim passengers acting in non-ordinary ways – taking McDonalds bags with them into lavatories, asking for seat belt extenders and instead of using them laying them at their feet, getting up repeatedly to rummage through carry-on items in the overhead bins – well, what the hell are you supposed to think? And what the hell are you supposed to do?
Are you going to wait until they slit your seatmate’s throat before you ask the flight attendant if there’s an air marshal on board? Or are you going to sit there and act cool because your educated lefty progressive friends might think less of you if you get hysterical and speak up?
Well, most of us will act cool and pretend we don’t have suspicions – but some will react in other, less commendable ways. Who can blame them?
My friends of the left couldn’t heap enough ridicule on Annie Jacobsen after she wrote her article a few years ago. Now they’re busy expressing contempt for the woman who got scared and demanded to be taken back to the gate in San Diego. I have to wonder: how many of them, had they been on the same plane as Richard Reid, would have booed the flight attendant who tried to wrestle the lit match from his hand?
Unfortunately, the entire Transportation Security Administration apparatus, especially the parts we’re exposed to – incompetent gum-chewing inspectors, senseless rules, mindless harassment of obviously-innocent passengers – is utterly contemptible. As security breach after security breach enters the public consciousness, we’re beginning to realize that there’s nothing between us and the terrorists but . . . us!
So I think I’m going to give that poor woman in San Diego a break. She was frightened, and she had some reason to be so. She thought it was more important to act than to be cool and do nothing. I can’t blame her.
Hey, it sucks to be an Arab on a plane these days. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s going to stay from the foreseeable future.
Paul, there you go being rational again. Stop that, hear! Then you will understand all. In all seriousness, rationality seems to be in short supply on all fronts these days. I can fully sympathsize with little old ladies who travel these days. Last year when we were returning from London, there was a seat assignment mixup. I had gotten our seat assignments over four months in advance but for some reason, the computer assigned Neil’s seat to another passenger, who happened to be a thirties something Arab male. We were already in our seats when he boarded with his family, two women in full burkas and two children. (By the way, one of the women looked suspiciously masculine.) He settled them together then came looking for his seat, where Neil was sitting. He got demanding and I called for the flight attendant. I pointed out Neil’s seat had been assigned months before but his argument was that since his was assigned only hours before, he should have the seat.
By this time, everyone was watching and about a dozen men were all standing at their seats, staring at him. Two were your size, which got his attention. I amost asked him if he knew how long it took a body to freefall from 30,000 feet but thought better of it. The flight attendant took him to a vacant seat by his family. Apparently, he just did not want to sit with his family. Strange people.
I liked your post about diverting to King Salmon. There is a moral there about the guy in the hot seat taking the heat if something goes wrong. The corollary is that when he calls it right, no one seems to remember.