Flying while Ay-rab
The recent arrests and dramatic announcements of the UK-centered terrorist plot to bomb flights to the US have had the usual twisted political effect. The Pres-o-dent and his operatives have loudly proclaimed them a vindication of counter-terrorism policies. Whoah. The only thing more absurd is, if you can imagine it, what they would have said if the attacks had succeeded. "Orwellian" is an overused word, but what do you call it when the failure of the Iraq War is trotted out as the justification for the war itself? The increasing threat of terrorist attacks resulting from the War is a retroactive excuse for why the War is necessary to prevent terrorist attacks.
Weirder yet is the way some commentators seize on these arrests--achieved through assiduous human intelligence--a "mole" inserted after the 7/7 subway attacks--as a vindication of the NSA wiretap program.
And today more evidence has emerged that the announcements themselves were timed according to political calculation, and that, perhaps, the arrests themselves had been made prematurely because of US pressure to produce headlines that would turn the political discourse back to terrorism. Of course we can believe this to be the case. It's happened routinely in the past.
But the mystery remains as to why the Pres-o-dent's men can be so confident that this news--this very bad news--should shore up their political support. No, it's not very mysterious. They can count on an instinctive anti-Ay-rab racism to square this circle. The great public will not make the connection between Bush administration policies and the threat of terrorism because it's Ay-rabs we're talking about, and they're BORN terrorists.
But if you're not convinced, check out two news stories that became front-page material in the wake of the UK arrests. One involves a group of Egyptian study-abroad students who for some reason decided not to go to Bozeman, Montana to attend the month-long course they'd signed up for. Suppose they'd been from Ukraine; would anyone have cared? And the news stories carefully point out that there is no suspicion of terrorism-related activities. So why is this news?
The other story involves three Ay-rab types from Texas who were pulled over in Michigan for driving while Ay-rab. Their van was found to contain a thousand cellphones, the prepaid disposable kind. They say they buy them from suppliers and then sell them for $5 a piece more, but that, because Texas is already saturated, they drove up to Michigan, where law enforcement officers now suspect they want to blow up the big bridge at Michilimackinac. Sure, with a thousand cellphones and no explosives. Suppose these three hapless Ay-rabs had been Mexicans. Would they be sitting in jail waiting for someone to post $750K in bail a piece? OK, maybe, but would it be news? And would anyone think they were terrorists?
But, as I've asked many times already on this blog, where's the payoff for any politician to point this out? Only on the horizon. And you can't count on the news media to help you, either. They're too busy trying to put human faces on the problem--demonic, Ay-rab, bearded Muslim human faces.
The recent arrests and dramatic announcements of the UK-centered terrorist plot to bomb flights to the US have had the usual twisted political effect. The Pres-o-dent and his operatives have loudly proclaimed them a vindication of counter-terrorism policies. Whoah. The only thing more absurd is, if you can imagine it, what they would have said if the attacks had succeeded. "Orwellian" is an overused word, but what do you call it when the failure of the Iraq War is trotted out as the justification for the war itself? The increasing threat of terrorist attacks resulting from the War is a retroactive excuse for why the War is necessary to prevent terrorist attacks.
Weirder yet is the way some commentators seize on these arrests--achieved through assiduous human intelligence--a "mole" inserted after the 7/7 subway attacks--as a vindication of the NSA wiretap program.
And today more evidence has emerged that the announcements themselves were timed according to political calculation, and that, perhaps, the arrests themselves had been made prematurely because of US pressure to produce headlines that would turn the political discourse back to terrorism. Of course we can believe this to be the case. It's happened routinely in the past.
But the mystery remains as to why the Pres-o-dent's men can be so confident that this news--this very bad news--should shore up their political support. No, it's not very mysterious. They can count on an instinctive anti-Ay-rab racism to square this circle. The great public will not make the connection between Bush administration policies and the threat of terrorism because it's Ay-rabs we're talking about, and they're BORN terrorists.
But if you're not convinced, check out two news stories that became front-page material in the wake of the UK arrests. One involves a group of Egyptian study-abroad students who for some reason decided not to go to Bozeman, Montana to attend the month-long course they'd signed up for. Suppose they'd been from Ukraine; would anyone have cared? And the news stories carefully point out that there is no suspicion of terrorism-related activities. So why is this news?
The other story involves three Ay-rab types from Texas who were pulled over in Michigan for driving while Ay-rab. Their van was found to contain a thousand cellphones, the prepaid disposable kind. They say they buy them from suppliers and then sell them for $5 a piece more, but that, because Texas is already saturated, they drove up to Michigan, where law enforcement officers now suspect they want to blow up the big bridge at Michilimackinac. Sure, with a thousand cellphones and no explosives. Suppose these three hapless Ay-rabs had been Mexicans. Would they be sitting in jail waiting for someone to post $750K in bail a piece? OK, maybe, but would it be news? And would anyone think they were terrorists?
But, as I've asked many times already on this blog, where's the payoff for any politician to point this out? Only on the horizon. And you can't count on the news media to help you, either. They're too busy trying to put human faces on the problem--demonic, Ay-rab, bearded Muslim human faces.
posted by jnerone at 12:10 PM
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