Published June 3rd, 2006 by Future Atlas
Terrorism: how to create enemies
The NYT reports on a pattern of harassment and mistreatment of American Muslims at airports and borders. For instance:
Taleb Salhab and his wife say they too were dragged away in handcuffs at the border crossing in Port Huron, Mich., as their two preschool daughters wailed in the back seat of their car. The Salhabs were discharged after four hours of questioning, with no explanation from customs officers.
A significant problem is the watch list of suspicious names: bizarrely, it is merely a list of names, not a list of people, and so innocent citizens and travelers are continually flagged as being “on the list.” For Muslims, who have a relatively small pool of names, the problem is particularly acute.
Most of those wrongly placed on the watch list seethe with frustration and anger, finding it unbelievable that a technologically advanced country like the United States has been unable to develop a list that can distinguish between a lurking terrorist and a harmless citizen with a Muslim name.
Treating Muslim immigrants like they are potential enemies, and abusing them in the process, is an excellent recipe for ending up in the situation of France or Britain: threatened by a hostile group of Islamic extremists embedded in the society which could have embraced them.
(In a different sphere, the same principle applies to the larger immigration debate. It is mostly about Hispanic immigration, and the anti-immigrant forces who would personalize the policy problem — harassing or arresting individual immigrants — risk bringing about the very situation they fear: an alienated and numerous minority adjacent to an alternate homeland. This would be a long time developing, but is not unimaginable.)
Andrew Yu-Jen Wang Says
Speaking of terrorism:
George W. Bush committed hate crimes of epic proportions and with the stench of terrorism (indicated in my blog).
George W. Bush did in fact commit innumerable hate crimes.
And I do solemnly swear by Almighty God that George W. Bush committed other hate crimes of epic proportions and with the stench of terrorism which I am not at liberty to mention.
Many people know what Bush did.
And many people will know what Bush did—even to the end of the world.
Bush was absolute evil.
Bush is now like a fugitive from justice.
Bush is a psychological prisoner.
Bush has a lot to worry about.
Bush can technically be prosecuted for hate crimes at any time.
In any case, Bush will go down in history in infamy.
Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993
“GEORGE W. BUSH IS THE WORST PRESIDENT IN U.S. HISTORY” BLOG OF ANDREW YU-JEN WANG
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I am not sure where I had read it before, but anyway, it is a linguistically excellent statement, and it goes kind of like this: “If only it were possible to ban invention that bottled up memory so it never got stale and faded.” Oh wait—off of the top of my head—I think the quotation came from my Lower Merion High School yearbook.
Mar 2nd, 2009 at 11:24 pm