The bank robbery suspect was described as tall and muscular with blue eyes and blonde hair. He was the primary focus of a nationwide manhunt because he'd held up banks in more than twenty states. Because this man had used a vehicle to move from state to state, the Transportation Safety Authority had been assigned the case. The TSA poured men and resources into his capture but were having little success. For in order to be impartial, they also had to investigate short, fat men with brown hair and brown eyes.
Okay, the case is obviously bogus. But not the concept. And I am pained to the depths of my being making this argument. Because growing up in the south I learned early on how culturally destructive associative guilt could be. How it could ruin lives and level torment at the innocent. How virulent one suggestion from one diseased mind could alter the thinking of an entire community or city or state. But this is not the '50's and '60's. 9/11 rendered fairness, impartiality, equality and the benefit-of-the-doubt, fluid constructs.
When a veteran network reporter-whose beat is terrorism-and his family are subjected to lengthy pat-down body searches before boarding a transatlantic flight, when an 80 year old grandmother is forced to remove her shoes and jewelry and walk repeatedly through a metal detector because her new hips and knees are triggering the devices, the system is not only broken, it is inane! Short, fat men who haven't robbed a bank are just as "suspicious" as tall, muscular men who have? Please.
The affiliated government security agencies have initiated responses to the Christmas day attempt to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight. A laundry list of "countries of interest" has now been added to those requiring "enhanced passenger screening" techniques, a move expected, understood and commendable, but one, as most experts agree, that does little else but make the flying public "feel" safer. Terrorists will simply avoid those airports; they're crazy, not stupid. Other steps have been taken to address the problem, and one would hope that following the recent presidential tongue lashing the various acronyms will now be more conversant with each other.
So, do we initiate profiling?
I know the suggestion pushes the buttons of every self-interest group that would be affected. But is indignation their only response? Might we pose the question: what else would you have us do? The casualty count is about to skyrocket in Afghanistan, and in the months to come will be a heartbreaking reminder of the price being paid by our military and their families. We all, regardless of philosophy like to consider ourselves patriotic. If we label the acceptance of such an annoying, inconvenient, even belittling practice, a "Patriotic Act", would that render it more palatable? And I have to acknowledge that due to my genes I would likely be lumped into this group.
Again, as a knee-jerk moderate, I feel compelled to assert that the leitmotif of this argument is profoundly loathsome to me. But another incident with a great loss of American lives will render us all "profilers" by default, and it will quickly become a tolerated practice of the TSA.
So, what are our choices? But please answer this with your head, not your heart.