Eric Olson briefly registers his opposition to profiling on the grounds that Richard Reid and Jose Padilla weren't muslims. Well, Reid himself looks like he could be, but Padilla certainly doesn't and he still has a point. The danger of racial profiling is that the Islamists will find people who are not Arab to start doing their dirtywork. Additionally, there seems to be something inherently unAmerican (and, probably, unconstitutional) about narrowing the random searches to a single ethnicity. I would go further to say that while it may not be unconstitutional, the entire idea of random full-body searches seems unAmerican. However, I'm at a loss as to make alternative suggestions and it's clear that we must do something. So, if we're going to do this, why don't we do it right? Must we also search Vice President Gore and Congressman Dingle just so we can search Ahmed and Asaad? Maybe so, but it sure does seem like a waste of resources. Even so, if we check one out of ten people, that means we're only checking 1 out of 10 Arabs, and a fraction of those the most likely culprits (young Arab male). Do we check everyone? Even if possible, that would require an awful lot of resources, but it's also the only way we could check everyone that seems suspicious with impugnity. That's what it comes down to. If someone looks suspicious to airport security, they ought to be able to check him freely without having to worry about being sued. Most people who are suspicious are going to be Arab, which leads us right back to checking everyone or profiling. The first highly impractical and the second deemed unethical. That means we've got to try to find another way that doesn't involve intrusive full-searches. Until we do, however...

We can't ignore the demographics of what we're up against. The most likely culprits are Arab. All the political correctness in the world won't stop that. As Eric points out, though, they are not all Arab. Is that, however, sufficient reason not to resort to profiling? I'm not convinced that it is. We can't hold on to our freedoms and apply any fail-safe plan to contact this. What we can do, however, is apply various methods that will make their job harder. If we can stop them from using Arabs, we will have gone a long way to obstructing ambitious plots like 9-11. We will largely disqualify many of their most experienced personnel and they will have to resort to rejects like Padilla. Can you imagine them finding 20 such men (that are not rejects) for their next mission? I can't. We shouldn't stop at Arab men, as they will branch out and use whoever else they can. Most of them will be Arab, though. Most of them will be young. Almost all of them will be men. I fit two of the three criteria and if I was chosen for a full search on that basis, I would be much less inclined to object than if I was pulled aside randomly while more likely culprits are let through.

I'm still not comfortable with the idea of intrusive searches of anyone without some sort of probable cause. However, since most of the culprits are going to be Arab, young, and male, why not look there first?

FOLLOW-UP: Olson does agree with Michelle Cottle that it's associations (religious in this case) that determine likelyhood of being a terrorist. While that's true, it is impractical in regards to airport searches where you may not be able to tell whether or not they are Muslim, much less a radical. I don't they they wear "ALL NON-MUSLIMS ARE INFIDELS" T-shirts. We could probably employ some sort of service for constant domestic surveillance of Muslims and radicals, and that might be a good idea for organizations we can prove to be radical, but I don't know that this is an either-or situation and that monitoring its organizations so closely that we know whenever any one of them is going on a plane is particularly practical or desirable.