Why are we so bad at detecting the guilty and so good at collective punishment of the innocent?

By Christopher Hitchens


It's getting to the point where the twin news stories more or less write themselves. No sooner is the fanatical and homicidal Muslim arrested than it turns out that he (it won't be long until it is also she) has been known to the authorities for a long time. But somehow the watch list, the tipoff, the many worried reports from colleagues and relatives, the placing of the name on a "central repository of information" don't prevent the suspect from boarding a plane, changing planes, or bringing whatever he cares to bring onto a plane. This is now a tradition that stretches back to several of the murderers who boarded civilian aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001, having called attention to themselves by either a) being on watch lists already or b) weird behavior at heartland American flight schools. They didn't even bother to change their names.

So that's now more or less the routine for the guilty. (I am not making any presumption of innocence concerning Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.) But flick your eye across the page, or down it, and you will instantly see a different imperative for the innocent. "New Restrictions Quickly Added for Travelers," reads the inevitable headline just below the report on the notoriety of Abdulmutallab, whose own father had been sufficiently alarmed to report his son to the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, some time ago. (By the way, I make a safe prediction: Nobody in that embassy or anywhere else in our national security system will lose his or her job as a consequence of this most recent disgrace.)

See the rest at
Slate.com.

Just noticed this post.

Sadly, I laughed at least a dozen times reading this article. The absurdity is indescribable. I do have to wonder if what Mark Twain pondered will ever be solved.

Are they playing a game? Or are they indeed that stupid?

Not that people don't cry for it. People love "salve for the soul".

Put me on the no fly list by choice... at least commercially.

I think this defines this article pretty well.

It was reported over the weekend that in the aftermath of the Detroit fiasco, no official decision was made about whether to raise the designated "threat level" from orange. Orange! Could this possibly be because it would be panicky and ridiculous to change it to red and really, really absurd to lower it to yellow? But isn't it just as preposterous (and revealing), immediately after a known Muslim extremist has waltzed through every flimsy barrier, to leave it just where it was the day before?

Punish the innocent. Make us all feel better.

Just noticed this post.

Sadly, I laughed at least a dozen times reading this article. The absurdity is indescribable. I do have to wonder if what Mark Twain pondered will ever be solved.

Are they playing a game? Or are they indeed that stupid?

Not that people don't cry for it. People love "salve for the soul".

Put me on the no fly list by choice... at least commercially.

I think this defines this article pretty well.

It was reported over the weekend that in the aftermath of the Detroit fiasco, no official decision was made about whether to raise the designated "threat level" from orange. Orange! Could this possibly be because it would be panicky and ridiculous to change it to red and really, really absurd to lower it to yellow? But isn't it just as preposterous (and revealing), immediately after a known Muslim extremist has waltzed through every flimsy barrier, to leave it just where it was the day before?

Punish the innocent. Make us all feel better.

It's theatre, GW, THEATRE!

Of course it is.