How Political Correctness Will Lead to 9/11, Version 2

I spent the early part of this week in the Washington, D.C. area. Much of that time was in a car listening to talk radio, specifically, 107.7 FM, Washington Post Radio.

The major topic was about the arrest late last week of 17 Canadians on terrorism charges. This gang, or cell as we like to call them these days, was plotting to blow stuff up in Canada and to kill people because of Canada's participation in the U.S. led war on terror, in particular, the activities in Afghanistan. Because the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have a strict policy to protect the identity of criminal suspects, the only information we had on the 17 were their ages and that they were Canadian citizens.

Canadian citizens? Plotting to blow stuff up because of U.S. activities in Afghanistan? Post Radio presented a long train of so-called experts to pipe in on the topic. The experts were mostly university types with titles such as; Chairman (I'm sorry, Chair-Person) of the U.S.-Arab Studies Department at XYZ University. They all agreed on one thing; the world hates the United States. They were incredulous that Canadians, presumably our best friends, were becoming terrorists because of U.S. activities around the world. Bad, bad, United States. Look what we've done to these poor, innocent canucks. In fact, these poor innocents weren't turning into terrorists, the U.S. had made them. That damn Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld!

Comes now some truth on the matter. They aren't citizens of Canada, they're residents. Big difference. Citizens are born and raised there. Residents just show up and claim to want to stay a while. These terrorists are, in a word; Muslims. Honesty test: When you first heard about this incident what vision of the people came in to your head? What did they look like? If you said, "The McKenzie Brothers", give yourself a big "F".



That's what the liberal press wanted you to see. They wanted you to believe that the current U.S. administration has so bungled the whole world that the two guys pictured above have turned to terrorism. And in fact, if you instead saw someone like this;



Then you are a bigoted racist.

Another test: What is the name of the leader of the gang that was arrested? Qayyum Abdul Jamal. Yea, sounds Canadian to me. Eh?

Here is my point; some people in our great nation are so quick to condemn the United States for every bad thing that happens they we've gotten to the point of looking inwards to blame, instead of outwards. I would never suggest that the U.S. is perfect, but instead of crying for regime change in Washington and instead of trying to give radical Islam a great big hug to make it all better, maybe we should be call it as it really is; terrorism acts today are performed almost exclusively by radical Muslims. Not by Canadians, not by Iowans.

Not every Muslim is a terrorist. Far from it. But when that subset of people produce the majority of radical Islam terrorists shouldn't the authorities keep a keen eye on them? Is that such a terrible thing?

Here is an example; 6 months after 9/11/01 I was sitting in the gate area of a flight from Seattle to Minneapolis. Three Muslim men, all wearing turbans and carrying gym duffle bags (I didn't even know they still made these things) were walking about and speaking softly in Arabic. They made numerous phone calls from the pay phones (who uses pay phones anymore?) and kept moving from seating area to seating area. 9/11 being so fresh in my mind I became suspicious and even nervous. Call me a racist but when you're just a few months removed from 9/11 and you see Muslims acting this way you get nervous. Whether you like how that makes you feel or not.

As we get in line to board I find myself behind these three gentlemen and surely the security officials will pull one of them out of the line for a random check, right? Wrong. The security guys eye them up but because the Muslims were such an obvious target for a check the security guys passed them through and pulled me out. Why? Because the security guys had been trained to not assume that every Muslim is a terrorist. True enough, but what did this training lead to? The political correctness and soft bigotry of pretending not to notice the obvious differences in people. Even the fact that the checks need to be random will lead to trouble.

Just like the liberals ranting on Washington radio about how the U.S. somehow created terrorists out of simple-minded Canadians. We're pretending not to notice that the majority of terrorists in today's world hang out in mosques, oftentimes wear turbans and speak in Arabic. Is this so hard to see? If we ignore it then surely another 9/11 will happen, and right under our noses too, because we'll be ignoring the obvious and wasting time checking the bags of a guy like me.

By the way, do you know how the Canadian authorities (with much help from U.S. authorities (in other words, we did the heavy lifting)) tracked these guys down? That's right! The authorities tracked phone calls and emails made from these guys to and from known terrorists overseas. Gee, maybe that Patriot Act has some value after all, doesn't it? And why isn't this - "Patriot Act Foils Another Deadly Attack" - the lead subject day after day in the mainstream press? And I wonder what maverick-boy, Mr. I-voted-against-the-Patriot-Act, Russ Feingold has to say on this matter? Oh, that's right, he's too busy in his run-up for a presidential bid to spend any time actually working for the people of Wisconsin or the United States. He's out working for himself. But I'll save the details of that for another rant.