Profiling Authorized by Obama

Yesterday, profiling of airport travelers entering the United States became an official measure. Pat-downs and obligatory searches of carry-on bags are now in place for nationals of fourteen countries, as well as passengers who have traveled through those states.

It is ironic, to say the least, to see profiling given the rubberstamp under the Obama administration: that same Obama, black but somehow not quite black, with an Arabic middle name so suspicious to his adversaries, who dreams of a post-racial America. He is the same Obama who proclaimed loud and clear that the United States does not have to choose between security and its ideals. Now, in the name of security, those post-racial ideals are being hung out to dry.

So if you should happen to find yourself a national of one of the fourteen countries on the American blacklist (Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen), or if you have passed through one of these countries, you are officially a suspect. You will be obligatorily subjected to a pat-down and a search at the airport.

These directives, of course, follow the attack attempted on December 25th by the Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who concealed explosives in his underwear on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. If these procedures help us avoid attacks, all the better. However, seeing as profiling was already a reality in airports, the objective here seems to be political, first and foremost. Because the Republican opposition frequently accuses the Obama administration of being lax on national security, it was crucial to reassure the populace through publicly proclaimed tough measures.

Is profiling, as authorized by Obama, more acceptable than when it was authorized by Bush? I look over a passage from “A More Perfect Union*,” Obama’s speech that I so loved: “Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.” Upon rereading it, I am disappointed – even if expectedly so.

How far must we go in the name of security and the war on terror? To debate this question is an extremely frustrating exercise. The Western world is split between its democratic values and the need to defend itself against the jihadist terrorists who have learned to perniciously exploit these very same values. Recall the cry of Ramzi Mohammed, one of the perpetrators of the failed London attacks, who was arrested in July 2005: “I have rights!” he shouted at the police taking aim at him. “He didn’t, in any case, accord the same to the passersby surrounding him when he tried to set off his device,” says Philippe Migaux, co-author of the collection “The History of Terrorism**.”

Because of a handful of radical Islamists, we will treat as suspects millions of people for whom their only crime was to be born in a Muslim nation (or in Cuba, the only non-Muslim country on the blacklist, accused by Washington of supporting terrorism).

How far must we go in the name of security? For those, including myself, who believe as much in the fight against terrorism as in respect for the ideals of democracy, there is no position in this debate that truly satisfies all. If we criticize violations of human rights, we are accused of being Pollyannas, or worse, of being complicit with the terrorists. If we applaud systematic profiling, we are accused of ceding to the security obsession and of encouraging social marginalization — the kind which feeds, even more, the propaganda of terrorism recruiters.

In the end, the big winners in the debate remain the terrorists themselves, who have accomplished their objective: to sow terror.

These are sad times we live in.

*De la race en Amérique. Barack Obama. Grasset, 2008

**Histoire du terrorisme. De l’Antiquité à Al Qaida. Sous la direction de Gérard Chaliand et Arnaud Blin. Bayard, 2006.