Profile in Sanity

Profile in Sanity

By: Bill O'Reilly for BillOReilly.com

Thursday, Aug 17, 2006

We are living in treacherous times and terrorists well understand that; even

when one of their murderous plots is uncovered, the fallout from the

aborted action is a big win for them. After British authorities prevented a

couple dozen Muslim fanatics from blowing up a number of American

jetliners, the ensuing airport chaos caused pain and inconvenience for

thousands of people. Unfortunately, that will continue for the foreseeable

future.

Osama and his pals must take great joy at watching 80-year old

grandmothers being patted down and their creams confiscated by jumpy

security people. This is the ultimate al Qaeda reality program: "Survivor:

Airport."

Add to that the foolish political bickering over who is protecting Americans

better, and you have great joy in Mudhutville; the hiding Qaeda leadership

wins again.

Of course, the sane way to protect Americans in the sky is to stop looking

for nail files and begin profiling people who might actually cause terror

damage. That is not "racial" profiling; that is "terror" profiling. Most of the

recent terror activities have been perpetuated by young Muslim men. So it is

these people that need greater scrutiny when they check in for a flight.

I know that's mean, but believe me when I tell you that if the Irish

Republican Army was attempting to blow up American planes, I'd have no

problem being patted down before I stepped on a plane. I would understand

and appreciate the common sense behind the close look. I would not

consider myself a victim, but would be furious that my ethnic cousins were

causing so much trouble.

I believe some Muslim-Americans feel the way I do. They understand that

some of their co-religionists are remorseless killers.

But not all Muslims think that way, and certainly the ACLU and other far-left

groups oppose profiling. They fight hard against most strategies designed to

make terror attacks more difficult. Except, of course, when it involves them.

You may remember the New York Civil Liberties Union sued when the NYPD

instituted random bag searches on the subway. Yet a sign at the NYCLU

building warned that the organization had the right to search the bags of all

people entering there. Hypocritical? You make the call.

The biggest problem we have in America when it comes to defeating

terrorism is that some of us live in the real world, and some of us live in a

theoretical zone where all problems could be solved if only we just talked

things over with those who want to kill us. For those people, actions like

profiling, unilateral military campaigns, and tough interrogation methods are

simply too drastic. These Americans believe aggressive terror

countermeasures actually encourage violence against us and create more

willing terror killers.

Looking back, the actions of Presidents Clinton and Bush in his first year

pretty much ignored the growing terror threat from the Muslim world. Little

aggressive action was taken against al Qaeda when it blew up our

Embassies in Africa and attacked our warship off the coast of Yemen.

There was no airline profiling going on when 19 Muslim killers boarded three

airliners on 9/11, all with one way tickets to hell. Had we been wiser then,

three thousand Americans could be alive today.

But we were not wise then, and we are not wise now, either. Call it what

you will, but lay off Granny at the airport and zero in on higher risk subjects.