Thoughts for Tax Day: A friend sent this article on various rules that restrict the U.S. government from investigating terrorists. The implication of the article is that we’d all be better off if the CIA and the FBI could work unfettered. Certainly the widows and orphans of September 11th would be better off. Yet our government has a history of pouring tremendous amounts of effort in the wrong areas, often resulting in months or years of misery for innocent people. One of the more humorous recent examples is Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan’s detainment at the Vancouver airport. We want the Federales to be strong enough to hunt down Saudi terrorists in flight schools but sufficiently weak that we can throw them off our own backs when necessary.
[As noted on Prairie Home Companion on Saturday, if you’re sending a check to the IRS this year put a couple of extra stamps on the envelope because it’s going all the way to Iraq.]
Your defense of Ian McEwan taints the credibility of the truly innocent. It is clear and apparently indisputed in the article that McEwan had declared himself a tourist even though his intentions were of a business and cultural nature. Why do I think the attitude of exacerbation would be much different if the author were Saudi and he was going around to Mosques and religous university on a speaking tour, collecting thousands of dollars along the way. Because McEwan is a European he gets a free pass.
A friend of mine is a journalist who recently left for a reporting trip in India. She and the photographer unwisely applied for their tourist visas together. For “profession” one listed “newspaper reporter” and the other “newspaper photographer.” The Indian consul general yelled at them, “Why did you LIE??! Why LIE!!??” before issuing them the proper, journalist visa.
The Indian consul was right to be upset, but also kind to be accomodating. In this case, America could have been more kind and lenient. But to put this guy’s case in the same category as someone detained for having a political book in their carry on or wearing a disagreeable t shirt is merely harping on Homeland Security for doing the job we have specifically asked them to do — thwart people trying to get in or remain in on bad visas — and makes it easier for them to ignore justified complaints of overzealousness.
PS forget if he were a Saudi, what if he were a Brit of Arab descent?
…Maybe we need strictly enforced laws that apply only to people we don’t like, and enshrined liberties and freedom from overweening governmental regulations for those people we do like.
i agree
the idea of human right’s is upon this article , thats the aim of our story
I read your entry with relish… ah, yes, damn FBI! Then, clicked on the link… only to find that the source is the reviled, lying you know what Ann Coulter. I don’t believe one word the she has to say.
Either you don’t know who she is, or you believe in her. Sad either way. Hint: one of her heros is Joseph McCarthy. Yes, that McCarthy. From http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20030630.html
“She frequently implies that liberal attacks on Senator Joseph McCarthy and the alleged hysteria of McCarthyism were nothing more than an attempt to cover up this widespread treachery…”