Close call with terrorist should be wake-up call

Phil Valentine

December 29, 2009

PhilValentine.com

 

I hate to sound like a broken record but the lack of profiling has almost gotten us killed . . . again.  The latest was a Christmas Day attempt by a Muslim terrorist to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines jet.  Because the terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, originally boarded a plane in Lagos, Nigeria it’s unclear whether he was re-screened in Amsterdam before boarding the flight to Detroit.  If he was his re-screening apparently was sorely lacking.  The terrorist managed to sneak explosives on the plane in his underwear.

Bombs in a man’s briefs are bound to elicit the obvious jokes but this security breach was no laughing matter.  Abdulmutallab managed to set the device off.  The fact that the bomb malfunctioned made the difference between private parts pyrotechnics and 289 people going down over Detroit in flames.

Our security breakdown came when his father turned him into American authorities at the U.S. embassy in Nigeria because he was troubled by his son’s growing extremist views.  Abdulmutallab was placed on a terrorist watch list but, inexplicably, was never placed on a no-fly list.  One would think that if someone is suspicious enough to be a suspected terrorist that the person would not be allowed to enter the United States under any circumstances, much less fly in.  The Obama Administration is reviewing our security procedures but nothing will change until they acknowledge the obvious.  Muslims are far more likely to be terrorists than anyone else.

A recent Pew Global Attitudes Project poll revealed that 43 percent of Nigerian Muslims, of which Abdulmutallab is one, believe that suicide bombings are justified.  An alarming 54 percent believe Osama bin Laden is a great guy.  What that tells you is at least one in two Muslims from Nigeria is, in all probability, at least a terrorist sympathizer if not an outright terrorist.

Do we ban these people from coming to this country?  No, instead we rewrite the airline rules so that you can’t use the bathroom just before a flight lands and you’ll no longer be able to see that little airplane on international flights that follows the flight path on your video screen.  How about this?  How about we keep the dangerous people off the airplanes by scrutinizing people a little more closely?  We couldn’t do that.  It might make someone feel uncomfortable.

Here’s the drill.  We’re under attack and at war with Muslim fundamentalist terrorists.  Wouldn’t it make sense to closely check those who potentially fall into that category?  But, you see, we’re not dealing with common sense these days.  We’re dealing with political correctness which has infected our entire culture.  People are afraid to offend anyone for fear of being labeled a racist or worse.

I learned of a case where a young white girl allowed two black guys into her car late one night.  One guy she barely knew, the other she didn’t know at all.  Normally, she wouldn’t have allowed anyone into her car at that hour of the night, people familiar with the case told me.  They suspect that because she didn’t want to be labeled a racist she gave the guys a lift.  They raped her then killed her.  Now, that’s certainly not to say that all black men are rapists.  That’s not the point.  The point is that political correctness has come to supplant common sense.  In all likelihood a young black woman would never let two strange white men into her car late at night.  And there’s no PC pressure to do so.

Common sense must transcend political correctness or we’ll all end up dead.