{"id":266,"date":"2007-09-02T10:55:16","date_gmt":"2007-09-02T17:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=266"},"modified":"2007-11-04T08:05:12","modified_gmt":"2007-11-04T15:05:12","slug":"arabs-on-a-plane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=266","title":{"rendered":"Arabs on a Plane"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow, the left side of the blogosphere is up in arms over this story<\/a>, about the\u00a0woman who demanded to be let off a departing flight after becoming frightened by Arab passengers she thought were acting suspiciously.\u00a0 Witness this blog entry, titled “racist hysteric apologizes for targeting DOD-approved swarthy people<\/a>,” and particularly the reader comments below the entry.\u00a0 It echoes\u00a0the left’s reaction to Annie Jacobsen’s 2004 scare article, Terror in the Skies, Again?<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, my credentials as a fellow-traveling lefty pinko are well established, but I can’t jump on this bandwagon.\u00a0 Who commits terrorism?\u00a0 Who hijacks airliners?\u00a0 A review of terrorist incidents and attacks<\/a>, including airliner hijackings, shows it’s\u00a0predominantly Muslim men, and Arab Muslim men in particular.<\/p>\n

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?\u00a0 And if you see the Arab Muslim passengers acting in non-ordinary ways – taking McDonalds bags with them\u00a0into 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?\u00a0 And what the hell are you supposed to do<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Are you going to wait until they\u00a0slit your seatmate’s\u00a0throat before you ask the flight attendant if there’s an air marshal on board?\u00a0\u00a0Or 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?<\/p>\n

Well,\u00a0most of us will<\/em> act cool and pretend we don’t have suspicions – but some will react in other, less commendable ways.\u00a0 Who can blame them?<\/p>\n

My friends of the left couldn’t heap enough ridicule on Annie Jacobsen after she wrote her article a few years ago.\u00a0 Now they’re\u00a0busy expressing contempt for the woman who got scared and demanded to be taken back to the gate in San Diego.\u00a0 I have to wonder: how many of them, had they been on the same plane as Richard Reid<\/a>, would have booed the flight attendant who tried to wrestle the lit match from his hand?<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 As security breach<\/a> after security breach<\/a> enters the public consciousness, we’re beginning to realize that there’s nothing between us and\u00a0the terrorists but . . . us!<\/p>\n

So I think I’m going to give that poor woman in San Diego a break.\u00a0 She was frightened, and she had some reason to be so.\u00a0 She thought it was more important to act than to be cool and do nothing.\u00a0 I can’t blame her.<\/p>\n

Hey, it sucks to be an Arab on a plane these days.\u00a0 That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s going to stay from the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow, the left side of the blogosphere is up in arms over this story, about the\u00a0woman who demanded to be let off a departing flight after becoming frightened by Arab passengers she thought were acting suspiciously.\u00a0 Witness this blog entry, titled “racist hysteric apologizes for targeting DOD-approved swarthy people,” and particularly the reader comments below […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10,3,22,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-brother","category-current-events","category-flying","category-terrorism","category-a-series-of-tubes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}