So much for semantics! The official suggestion from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies now is that every citizen should be on the lookout for strange behavior by strange people at strange times and report same to the proper authorities. There's no argument with this, just plain common sense. However, it does smack of an important tool used in communist countries in which citizens are commanded to do the same thing, with the results often amounting to tortures and killings of people who have been reported on by even family members, not to mention neighbors, fellow workers, etc.
This gives an indication as to the viability of a democracy, in which people are morally expected to mind their own business and not interfere with that of others. In the SB case, it was reported that a neighbor of the assassins noticed peculiar activity at their home carried out at times by peculiar people, whom he did not report lest being accused of profiling. Attorney General Lynch was present in the press conference at which the FBI official made his statements, the implication of which was that profiling is absolutely necessary.
Profiling, however, is anathema to the political-correctness crowd, probably including the president. That word would traumatize the faculties at most universities and colleges. They would immediately bring up the issue of profiling vis-a-vis the black community, even though it would be perfectly reasonable in hunting down killers in Chicago, where 455 murders have been carried out this year, 95% of them by blacks on blacks, 20 more already than in all of last year.
Now that a definite link to ISIS by the Muslim/Pakistani woman in the SB killings has been recognized and noted for the public by the FBI, there will be a flurry of activity amongst the faculties against the profiling of Middle Easterners although people will be looking over their shoulders now or at their next-door neighbors if they see women in head-scarves or men of obvious Middle East descent, no matter how innocent they are of anything. Plain common sense. This creates a troubling circumstance, not least because mistakes in both reporting and responses could cause horrific outcomes.
The matter is compounded because it involves religion, not least because no fanatic is more dangerous than a religious fanatic, who considers his cause worth his very life...or hers. The SB butchers were riddled with bullets. The Charlie Hebdo and Paris theater/restaurant killers were shot to death or died at their own hands. The killers of 9/11 died in the plane crashes. Muslim Saladin and the Christian Crusaders were the ancient examples and probably set the tone for the extant divide/animosity between Christians and Muslims or that of their nations today.
In any case, the die has been cast, to wit, that unless and until Muslims convince non-Muslims (infidels) that their holy book does not demand that infidels must pay the tax (become slaves, except for Jews, for whom death only) or die, they will be the objects of surveillance, organized or otherwise. The SB killers were a man (worked for California at $70,000 per year) and woman who had a six-month-old baby and appeared as dangerous as a pumpkin. People have a right to be wary and should not be blamed for it.
The effort is made every day in this country by Muslim officials to the effect that Islam is peaceful. The problem is that Americans look to events like 9/11, SB, the Koran, the Iranian ayatollah and the ISIS headman Baghdadi for the actual truth, to wit, that at its core Islam is unrelenting cruelty. To honestly renounce Islam is to become believable.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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