Our Rulers Are Not Serious

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ has long been convinced that airport "security" is a farce. Recent events in the UK have confirmed this view and revealed the so called "war on terror" to be little more than a sad joke.

Mustaf Jama, a Somali ''asylum seeker'' in Britain wanted for the murder of a policewoman, fled the country by taking his sister's passport, wearing a niqab (the full Islamic head-to-toe get-up that covers everything but the eyes) and passing unhindered through the checkpoints at Heathrow.

How about that? It turns out we are profiling after all, but we're profiling everybody except Muslims. Your wizened l'il ol' gran'ma on a Yuletide break to London is bent double and out of breath struggling to take off her coat and shoes. The officials sternly scrutinize her passport to check that the picture matches her flustered and bewildered face. All around her hundreds of women are doing the same, mutely shuffling through the scanner in their stocking feet. But Britain's most wanted man is breezing through because he took the precaution of dressing as a Muslim woman. And it would be culturally insensitive to expose them to the same scrutiny as your gran'ma.

Many of us think about the long-term shifts necessary to win this struggle: euthanizing the United Nations and overhauling other malign and anachronistic institutions. Fat chance. Mustaf Jama's express check-out is the perfect parodic reductio of "security": The state is willing to inflict pointless bureaucratic discomfort and inconvenience on everyone else, but the demographic group with the most links to terrorism gets to go through the fast-track VIP channel.

The funniest line in the Jama story was Her Majesty's government's touching faith in the Horn of Africa's extradition procedures:

''He is thought to be hiding in Somalia where approaches have been made to the transitional federal government to return him to Britain.''
The West is so wedded to political correctness that its wars are now fought against abstractions such as tactics.

It's as if after Pearl Harbor, the US had declared war on "surprise attacks".

hat tip: realclearpolitics

UPDATE 02 Jan 2007 @ 22:50
http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2006/press_release_12282006.shtm
CAIR Welcomes TSA Hajj Sensitivity Training

WASHINGTON -- The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today welcomed an announcement by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that it has provided special training about Islamic traditions related to the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, to some 45,000 airport security officers.

The TSA cultural sensitivity training includes details about the timing of Hajj travel, about items pilgrims may be carrying and about Islamic prayers that may be observed by security personnel. See: http://usinfo.state.gov/ (Search using the term "Hajj.").

h/t Michelle Malkin


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