Spencer Ackerman has this to say about Obama’s racial profiling which could endanger the US: “We need to call this what it is: a security risk. If you are one of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, a president who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia is sending you the message that you are considered a threat.”
Adding to the above, Glenn Greenwald opines in salon, “Obama’s new policy of targeting citizens from multiple predominantly Muslim countries for increased scrutiny will also undermine American security. It’s so striking how most of the policies we undertake in the name of combating Terrorism — including our various invasions, bombings and occupations, and our always-escalating Surveillance State — have exactly the opposite effect.”
The immediate and imperative result of fear and paranoia is heightened vigilance. Hence, the US government’s new policy on surveillance and racial profiling, especially at airports. The target is clearly the Muslims. Blame it on one Nigerian national who botched his job to blow up a passenger plane over Detroit last Christmas day. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is said to have been trained in a camp in Yemen, the freshest fertile ground for terror groups such as the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Hence, the US declares Yemen as the latest global security threat.
The circumstances surrounding the Nigerian national’s attempt to turn himself into a suicide bomber are now publicly blamed on failure of intelligence. Had the West’s intelligence networks done their job well, there would be less need for overt reactionary moves such as racial profiling.
Is this now a case of miscalculation and misstep when in a panic-stricken state? The US should realize that the best results produced by the intelligence process come from covert information-gathering and collection techniques, as well as razor-sharp information-processing strategies.
Obama’s racial profiling is obviously a case of the blind leading the blind. Haven’t they noticed yet? The more they nitpick on Muslims, the more infuriated the fundamentalist among them become.
Image: vissago in flickr
