The Fools Around Us Will Be Nigh The Death Of Us!

Stupidity comes in all forms, shapes and sizes. There are lefty fools, commie fools (low may their numbers be), righty fools (although to my way of thinking far fewer of them than of the lefty variety). There are libertarian fools, socialist fools (a whole lot of that variety) and then there are the PC fools. Oh, I know, some of you folk will say "Hey, wait, PC is a product of the right." And you'd be wrong to say that. As a therapist, I've heard time and time again from my peers: "Don't be judgmental." What a load, wrapped in PC and expressed as an escape from making a decision.

As human beings, we cannot help but be judgmental, it is part of our nature. What the left still hasn't learned, and I don't think they will EVER learn is that words mean things.

In the case of the word "judgmental" I offer you the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language definition:

Of, relating to, or dependent on judgment: a judgmental error.

Inclined to make judgments, especially moral or personal ones: a marriage counselor who tries not to be judgmental.

"A marriage counselor who tries not to be judgmental." Ok, let us parse this for a moment. Mary and Joe come to you for marriage counseling. Joe has been having an affair, which he recently "broke off" but has been still calling his "ex" girlfriend. He drinks heavily and becomes abusive when intoxicated. He gambles their savings away. Your job is to help this marriage survive, both say that they want that. Are you really going to be "non-judgmental" and let Joe's transgressions go by the wayside? Of course not, not if you are ethical. Now, you cannot be denigrating of Joe as a person, that would not be appropriate, but calling his behavior? Too often, the term "non-judgmental" is used across the board and such usage is inappropriate.

I submit that we are judgmental from the moment that we wake up and decide whether or not to sleep a bit longer or to get up. I typically wake up around 4 or 4:30 AM. I "choose" not to stay in bed, but get up, fix some coffee, do a little posting perhaps, read the day's dispatches perhaps, or catch CNN or Fox (quietly of course, my bride is still asleep). When I choose to get up I have made a judgment. When I pick out my clothes for the day, I have made a judgment; when I choose who to sit next to on the bus or train or subway, I have made a judgment.

When Mohammad Atta got on board that plane in the morning of 9/11, he made a judgment. When John Kerry made that silly salute he made a judgment. When you opened up this web page, you made a judgment. When Mayor Flower-Mountain Bloomberg decided to have every 5th subway passenger searched but not profile 18-35 year old Arab or South East Asian young men, he made a judgment. And a truly stupid one at that.

I wonder, daily, what it is going to take to get people to wake up out of their PC slumber and recognize that there is an identifiable group of people that want to kill us. Those people are not little girls (fourth photo down from the top), grannies or gramps in wheelchairs, Roman Catholic Nuns or retired Medal of Honor winners. No, these folk are of a certain type (H/T to Robert Bidinotto's blog) and they do indeed mean to do us ill. Jihad Watch (link to the immediate left) notes:

The funeral of British suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer was held in absentia in his family’s ancestral village, near Lahore, Pakistan. Thousands of people attended, as they did again the following day when a qul ceremony was held for Tanweer. During qul, the Koran is recited to speed the deceased’s journey to paradise, though in Tanweer’s case this was hardly necessary. Being a shahid (martyr), he is deemed to have gone straight to paradise. The 22-year-old from Leeds, whose bomb at Aldgate station killed seven people, was hailed by the crowd as ‘a hero of Islam’.

Some in Britain cannot conceive that a suicide bomber could be a hero of Islam. Since 7/7 many have made statements to attempt to explain what seems to them a contradiction in terms. Since the violence cannot be denied, their only course is to argue that the connection with Islam is invalid. The deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Brian Paddick, said that ‘Islam and terrorists are two words that do not go together.’ His boss, the Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, asserted that there is nothing wrong with being a fundamentalist Muslim.

Mr. Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, you are absolutely and totally wrong. The vast, vast, vast (I could add a couple of more here) majority of terrorist attacks (yes Reuters, I used the "T" word - scroll down for the T word entry) were carried out by Muslims. Not Baptists, Not RC Nuns, Not Buddist Monks, Not little girls and Not aging Afro-American Grandmothers. No, they have been carried out by: MUSLIMS, specifically, males between the ages of 16 and 35.

The terrorists are just that, terrorists. Judge William Young got it right when he sentenced Richard Reid, the “Shoe Bomber� in January of this year as reported in CNN:

You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist.

And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not treat with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists.

We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.

So war talk is way out of line in this court. You're a big fellow. But you're not that big. You're no warrior. I know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders."

If the worthy Judge can call a terrorist a terrorist, why can’t we profile for terrorism? “Well because, GM, that’s racist and judgmental.�

I’m beginning to think that no one is thinking. Or if they are thinking, they’re not thinking clearly. What is it about our fear of hurting someone’s feelings, of this namby-pamby, wishy-washy cant (Hypocritically pious language) that doesn’t allow us to make judgments when our lives and our civilization is at stake?
We cannot profile, because we must not appear to be racist or judgmental. Oh my gosh! You are a transit cop walking your beat. Over your radio, you hear “Be on the lookout for a 6 foot plus caucasian male with flaming red hair who is wanted for bombing a bus. Subject is wearing red suspenders, blue jeans and a white windbreaker jacket with no shirt underneath.“

Do you bother to look at grandmas, at children, at African Americans, at Arab Americans or do you look for someone fitting the profile, the description? The answer ought to be easy, but under Mayor Bloomberg’s orders, you can’t do that because the description includes the word Caucasian. Of course, I’m being sarcastic. But failure to profile those that fit the terrorist profile is not sarcastic, it is flat out criminal. Paul Sperry's NYTimes as noted in Bidinotto’s blog above states:

Critics protest that profiling is prejudicial. In fact, it's based on statistics. Insurance companies profile policyholders based on probability of risk. That's just smart business. Likewise, profiling passengers based on proven security risk is just smart law enforcement.
Besides, done properly, profiling would subject relatively few Muslims to searches. Elderly Muslim women don't fit the terrorist profile. Young Muslim men of Arab or South Asian origin do. But rather than acknowledge this obvious fact, the New York Police Department has advised subway riders to be alert for "people" in bulky clothes who sweat or fiddle nervously with bags.

Well, a lot of people wear bulky clothes. A lot of people fiddle with their bags. And for that matter, a lot of people sweat. Could the Police Department be any more general in describing the traits of an Islamic suicide bomber? Could its advice be more useless?
Truth be told, commuters need to be most aware of young men praying to Allah and smelling like flower water. Law enforcement knows this, and so should you. According to a January 2004 handout, the Department of Homeland Security advises United States border authorities to look out for certain "suicide bomber indicators." They include a "shaved head or short haircut. A short haircut or recently shaved beard or moustache may be evident by differences in skin complexion on the head or face. May smell of herbal or flower water (most likely flower water), as they may have sprayed perfume on themselves, their clothing, and weapons to prepare for Paradise." Suspects may have been seen "praying fervently, giving the appearance of whispering to someone. Recent suicide bombers have raised their hands in the air just before the explosion to prevent the destruction of their fingerprints. They have also placed identity cards in their shoes because they want to be praised and recognized as martyrs."

Did you get that? A description of the "typical" terrorist "According to a January 2004 handout, the Department of Homeland Security..." Profiles are used all the time in a variety of contexts from insurance companies to the FBI looking at the liklihood of a certain criminal meeting certain behavioral criteria. You profile when you screen applicants for a job. The list is endless, yet, because of our penchant for PC, because we are so afraid of being tagged racist we don't use the noggins that God gave us.

Recently, to convince America that "Moderate Muslims" are not supporting terrorism at all,

a Fatwa was issued by Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) issued the fatwa, and the Council on American - Islamic Relations (CAIR) organized the press conference, stating that several major U.S. Muslim groups endorsed the fatwa.

Steven Emerson, author of the article also notes:

In fact, the fatwa is bogus. Nowhere does it condemn the Islamic extremism ideology that has spawned Islamic terrorism. It does not renounce nor even acknowledge the existence of an Islamic jihadist culture that has permeated mosques and young Muslims around the world. It does not renounce Jihad let alone admit that it has been used to justify Islamic terrorist acts. It does not condemn by name any Islamic group or leader. In short, it is a fake fatwa designed merely to deceive the American public into believing that these groups are moderate. In fact, officials of both organizations have been directly linked to and associated with Islamic terrorist groups and Islamic extremist organizations. One of them is an unindicted co-conspirator in a current terrorist case; another previous member was a financier to Al-Qaeda.

Also:

The Chairman of the Fiqh Council, Taha Jaber Al-Alwani, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against Sami al-Arian, the alleged North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, whose trial began in June 2005 in Tampa, Florida. Mr. Alwani has been named in court documents as an official of several entities in northern Virginia suspected of being connected to terrorist financing. Documents released in the Al Arian trial show that Alwani funded the Islamic Jihad front groups in Tampa."

The justly acclaimed Norm Geras notes in a recent article:

Human rights are an indispensable part of a morally decent society (though the eager embracing of victimhood is not, and there's no doubt that the discourse of human rights has, along with multiculturalism, encouraged many to regard the status of victim of rights-violation as the most attractive one going, and hence to reach for it at the slightest provocation). But protection from those whose direct intention is to kill the innocent is also indispensable. Such protection may require us to be more ready to accept defensive policies which constrain, or in emergency infringe, individual rights than we've hitherto been accustomed to."

Robert Bidinotto also waits and wonders when Islam will honestly rise up and condem the terrorist clique within.

To put an end to this screed, being judgmental is both normal and human and entirely appropriate in this day and age; the age of terror. Failure to use appropriate tools in this war (profiling) because of fears of not being politically correct is both foolhardy and criminal. When will we wake up to the enemy's tactics? Not too late I hope. There are voices out there that are raising the issue, are there ears to hear and brains to decipher?

Update: A doff of the GM Chapeaux to Gail at Crossing the Rubicon2 for this NY Times article. Read it all!

Update #2: 60 minutes interview with "part of the problem" Again, read it all.

Update #3: A doff of the GM Chapeaux to Glen Reynolds for this. Once again, read it all.

Update #4: Dr. Sanity has more thoughts on the bogus "fatwa" (notice the scare quotes Reuters?)here and here from the President of Iran and here on the distortion of reality by the MSM and perhaps the PC'ers as well? As usual, this terrific lady and psychiatrist nails it smack dab on the head. Read it all links included!

Update #5: Michael Totten has an excellent post on how the war on terror affects tourism, both in our big cities, London, Europe and the Middle east. Thoughtful and as usual, well written.

Update #6: My Dog Vinnie at My Pet Jawa takes on CAIR... Fatwa city!

Posted by GM Roper at July 29, 2005 08:40 PM | TrackBack