My answer to that: Timothy McVeigh was an American white boy.
Everyone is on edge about people of middle eastern descent, but what do you expect? I'm very certain it was just a language thing of sorts (de didn't think about what he said could have been misunderstood) but yes, even some white dude from Iowa probably would have meet the same response. How the government would have handled this afterwards is anyone's guess.
The fact remains that Bin Laden's group still wants to attack us. They are testing us. I know of several incidents that have never made the news where it has been found they are testing the system. I won't give details, but in one case (a series of incidents) bags were found by TSA during screening to have common household items attached together that have no reason to be attached together, and were done so in a matter to make them appear threatening when being screened.
Back in WW2 you could pretty easily say "French guy good, German guy bad". But even then, what did the US do with Japanese in the US? Round them up and detain them.
The problem is now there is no easy boarder to look at on the map and tell who's good and who's bad. And let's also not forget that it's not just happening on airplanes. A few years ago some waitress in a diner in Florida swore she heard some middle easter customers talking about blowing something up. They were in a car and a U-haul. She called it in, and the FBI stopped them, shut down a section of alligator alley, and stripped the car and truck down the frames. Nothing was found.
The fact of the matter is that while un intentional, the guy did say something that rightfully triggered a security response, and these things are going to happen. One problem is you have organizations like CAIR that as far as I'm concerned are a mouthpiece for the terrorists. All they are doing is trying to make people scared to call in things that aren't right.
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