...or is the Muslim/terrorist/Israel situation just frustrating as hell?

What's a liberal to do?

No, I don't want to round up everyone in Dearborn or Miami named Ali or Mohammed. (How many cell phones does it take to make a terrorist? More than 1,000?)

No, I don't want the federal government to have the power to detain citizens for 28 days without charge. (The Brits enacted that cute bit of legislation to deal with the Irish)

And no, I don't believe that every Muslim that ever listened to a fundamentalist imam or took home a pamphlet is a dangerous subversive.

However...

I don't know how to stop religious crazies from blowing-up planes, and I don't want to stand for a cavity search every time I board a flight.

Hence the frustration.

Although I refuse to listen to the idiots that comprise the conservative radio talk circuit, I can't imagine that they have any sterling ideas (short of blaming Bill and Hillary) either. Apart from tired refrains like, "Send them back where they came from", (How?) or "It just goes to show the wisdom of invading Iraq", (even the Bush braintrust doesn't believe that anymore), the problem of Muslim/Arab terror defies simple solutions.

So where are we today?

In spite of the shooting of an innocent Arab who ran from the police in London earlier this year, we don't think of the British police as cowboys, so we tend to believe that the suspects arrested on Friday really were bad guys. (Scotland Yard doesn't have a "Ruby Ridge" in their recent past.)

The men arrested in England were maddeningly average. They just don't look like Mohammed Atta. They were accountants and government workers. One of them just got married, and there didn't appear to be a Richard Reid in the group.

Memo to the news media: If you want to help stop terrorism, stop running that mug shot of Richard Reid. The American public has come to believe that no one who looks that stupid could possibly be a serious threat.

If all of the detainees prove to be true terrorists, everyone in America and Western Europe will start wondering about their neighbor with the Jordanian wife or the soccer coach whose family is from Algeria.

This is less of an issue in America where Muslims comprise only about 2.5% of the population. Those percentages increase substantially in France, Germany, Denmark, and everywhere else West of Pakistan. To further complicate the matter, unlike the U.S., Europe's Muslims are poor, underemployed, and living is substantial-sized ghettos. Every move by European governments takes into account the reaction of their Muslim minorities. You can hardly blame them.

None of this really helps, but because this is my rant, allow me to make a suggestion or two:

America...Forget carry-on luggage. Stop trying to shove all of your worldly possessions into one suitcase and bring it aboard a plane. I don't care how often you fly and how many times your bag has been lost. The days of humping a suitcase, a laptop, a soft-carry bag and a briefcase,(for women, add a purse the size of a hockey equipment bag), aboard a plane are over. Get used to it. If you can build two hours into the front end of your trip to account for the added security, you can build in an additional 1/2 hour to collect checked bags. If the bag gets lost (and that doesn't happen often) stop at the first store you pass and buy a three pack of tidy-whities. Trust me, you'll live.

America...Regardless of GWB and his spinners,
Muslim
Arab
Middle Eastern
Sunni
Shiite and
terrorist are not, repeat, not synonymous terms.

I realize that it's complicated but if you are able to differentiate between Catholics, Baptists, and Scientologists (Jesus, what's that about); and between Southerners, Yankees, and Midwesterners, you'll figure out the rest.

If there is anything good that can be said about the disturbing events of last weekend it's that the plot was discovered in time and, it happened during a Congressional recess so our crack legislators weren't able to rush through another ill-conceived law like the Patriot Act. Small comfort!!

We'll do Israel tomorrow.









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