Eugene Robinson is one of the most predictable summoners of my dyspepsia. In this article, he informs us that the case of "Jihad Jane" (white, little, female) proves the folly of profiling and raises the necessity of all of us having to take off our shoes.
Nonsense.
The overwhelming majority of terrorists we are targeting are male, young, and hail from predominately Islamic nations. Any effort designed to weight evaluation of such people higher than others is rational and efficient. Any system in which such people are not weighted more heavily is irrational and inefficient. The presence of a Jihad Jane does not change the numbers, the proportions or the efficiencies.
Robinson is inveighing against profiling because it makes certain people feel bad. This is insufficient grounds for discontinuing it.
I get irritated when I hear people rail against profiling as a tool of law enforcement (or national security).
ReplyDeleteGiven that, unfortunately, most pedophiles are white males, if there was a pedophile on the loose here in my neck of the woods, I would hope to be stopped so I could tell the police that when they found the son-of-a-bitch, they'd have this citizen's okay if they wanted to beat the ever living piss out of him before they shot him in their own self-defense (clearly he would have lunged for the officer's gun).
I don't like people giving my demographic a bad name. That's the difference in how we view profiling.
Mr. Robinson is a product of the post Korean War era. His childhood formative years were were during the era of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Subsequently he has never spent any time outside ultra liberal institutions such as the University of Michigan, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post and now most frequently as a guest analyst on MSNBC. (Surprise)
ReplyDeleteOver my years of reading or listening to Mr. Robinson’s thoughts, I have come to the conclusion that he is overly sensitive to what he perceives to be anything even remotely associated with race. I daresay that any person or persons who may be slightly darker than a bar of Ivory Soap are assumed by Mr. Robinson to be always innocent and unfairly put upon by white society.
Unfortunately, when Mr. Robinson decries discrimination in identifying would be terrorists, he forgets that to discriminate = distinguish, tell apart, differentiate, separate, categorize or classify. The word did not take on a widely accepted pejorative meaning until the 1960s
When the vast majority of terrorists are young men from predominantly Islamic countries it would be folly to not discriminate.
Isn't that what the "Silence of the Lambs" serial killer squads are all about? Isn't that their job to develop profiles so as to catch 'em?
ReplyDeleteHammer - True, for white criminals. But you start traipsing along the hate crime line if the suspect is otherwise hued.
ReplyDeleteWe live in an increasing dangerous world. Events of terrorism, murder/suicide and combatant-like murder that are regularly seen on the nightly news overseas are now encroaching on our shores. Don’t believe this? We have had the Fort Hood Shooting, the Christmas Day Bomber, the Pentagon Shooter and now let me introduce you to Jihad Jane! What is it that is different about these events and individuals, they don’t fit the profile. We have billions of our dollars tied up in identifying individuals with recognition software and “watch lists” that none of these individuals are on. Last night I heard one of our government officials stating that our “watch lists” are so large and cumbersome that our government is no longer able to use it effectively.
ReplyDeleteWe have only been lucky that passengers took control of the Christmas Day Bomber or all passengers would have died that day. We were less lucky with Major Hasan at Fort Hood. The question we should ask ourselves is, “Are we getting better at this?” The sad answer is no! In 2008, 19 airports were threat tested by their Inspector General, all failed! In every case decoys were able to make it through airport security with weapons and explosives undetected. Our most elite Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate, who is responsible for finding new methods of protecting the American citizens, take a leadership role and evaluate these methods is still stuck on a method commonly referred to as Deception Detection, which neither works nor will it pass the scrutiny of the ACLU.
We hear our government advise us about the “Lonewolf” or self-proclaimed terrorist within the United States that can and will attack without warning or reference. When we see men in handcuffs who frankly look like terrorists we gain a certain degree of comfort that, “We can identify these people.” Yet now we hear about Jihad Jane, a blue eyed, blond American woman in the suburbs of Philadelphia who has been radicalized and now wishes to effect her terror.
We are told by our top governmental officials, the heads of CIA, FBI and the Director of National Intelligence that within the next six months an attack on the homeland is “certain;” and that was a month ago! What are we doing to better protect ourselves? Five years ago I approached the Science and Technology Directorate, Human Factors Division with a method to identify an emergency aggressor, a means to distinguish an angry adrenaline-driven Primal Aggressor from the far more lethal intent-driven Cognitive Aggressor enabling government to identify any murder/suicide terrorists. Individuals like Major Hasan, the Christmas Day Bomber and the Pentagon Shooter all could have been identified with this method prior to their violence.
Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate’s is focus on Deception Detection, they had no interest in my method. Deception Detection is flawed because different cultures deceive differently, there are over 2,000 cultures; therefore their method of Deception Detection was far too complicated for those who were expected to use it. Furthermore, any program being used by the Federal Government will need to pass a cross-examination by the ACLU; if it can’t pass this test, it will never reach the people and this program will not pass this cross-examination. In the end, they simply changed the name to “Project Hostile Intent” and continued down the same Deception Detection path. Wouldn’t you think that our Government would explore every reasonable opportunity to make our citizens safer? Are we being lulled by our government into thinking we are safe, instead of actually being safe.
With all of the money our government is spending on stimulus shouldn’t we be focusing more on this subject? I have noticed that our Director of Homeland Security look a little overwhelmed? If you would like to learn how to identify the murder/suicide before they effect their violence visit our blog, http://blog.AggressionManagement.com