Suppose there were a terribly dangerous intersection in Chattanooga where speeding scofflaws regularly caused deadly accidents. It would make sense for police to beef up patrols there to protect the public.
So why can’t the same common sense prevail when it comes to protecting our nation from terrorists?
After the attempt by a radical Muslim to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner on Christmas, U.S. authorities declared that people traveling from a number of countries known to sponsor terrorism or to have a strong terrorist presence would have to undergo additional screening. But immediately and predictably, so-called “civil rights” activists said that was religious profiling, because most of the countries in question have Muslim majorities. The head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded that we “First look at behavior, not at faith or skin color.”
But that is exactly what our nation is doing. We did not ask Muslim-majority nations to sponsor terrorist attacks, nor to harbor those who commit such acts. They chose that “behavior.” It would be absurd to use scarce security resources to intensively screen every grandmother from Finland or every Aborigine from Australia when we know the nations from which terrorists are far more likely to come.
The sad fact is that while most Muslims aren’t terrorists, the terrorist threat against America does come mostly from Muslims. We should respond to that threat the same way if our would-be attackers were Buddhists or Hindus or any other group. We cannot wish danger away by being “politically correct.”