Two men with dark skin boarded a plane last Wednesday to fly to Manchester, England.
After some nervous shuffling and whispering, many of the passengers left their seats and returned to the boarding area, refusing to fly with the pair. Someone overheard the men speaking a foreign language that “sounded like Arabic”. The men were also apparently dressed in jackets (admittedly a bit unseasonable in August) and one woman said she heard “something that alarmed” her. The airline escorted the men off the plane, seized their passports, and prevented them from taking the flight.
They were interrogated for several hours, and then their passports were returned and they took a different flight (later in the week) to England. Apparently nothing was amiss.
It’s official. The terrorists have won.
If there’s any doubt whether we have gone completely and totally overboard with our “security procedures”, this example demonstrates admirably how absolutely fanatic some people have become. It’s not enough that the government act like idiots with their non-sensical screening procedures; now we have common citizens refusing to fly because someone else on the plane looks suspicious. And– horror of horrors– speaks a language that “sounded like Arabic”.
It no longer even matters if a terrorist group wants to attack us– they don’t need to do anything at all to ground a plane or close a building. They merely watch (in infinite amusement, I’m sure) as our government and its terrified citizens do the job for them. It’s tragic that we’ve come to this point: a point where the color of your skin, or the language you speak, is enough to condemn you as a terrorist.
