Additional Solutions

2001-10-2 14:01:00

I forgot an important ingredient that would eliminate 50% of all Moslem suspects. None of the terrorists I know of have ever been women. I have heard of women supporting terrorists, but it is pretty much against their religion for them to have an active role. Basically, I would say it would be relatively safe to allow all Moslem women to stay in this country, citizens or not.

Assaf asks some good questions:
How would you recognize them as Moslems in the first place?

JJ
I believe the government keeps track of residents in the U.S. who are not citizens. We would have to look at their country of origin more than their religion such as Egypt, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. Most of the known Moslem terrorists have originated from these countries.

Assaf
You will probably recognize most of them, but not all of them, and I am afraid there will be a large percentage of unrecognized potentially hazardous people.

JJ
There is no good solution to this problem, but we can't just sit still like the two in the parable of decision who did nothing. We will make mistakes as we proceed, but if our intentions are good we will correct as we go and things will improve.

Assaf
What about people who you will erroneously recognize as Moslems?

JJ
If they are from the above mentioned countries you can be pretty sure they are Moslems. There are many Moslems from other countries, but these do not have such a history of aggression. If one claims to not be a Moslem and one suspects that he is a terrorist fanatic all you would have to do is ask him to swear in the name of Allah that Allah is not the name of his God and he has no allegiance to Mohammed. A Moslem would be afraid of going to hell for saying this.

Assaf
What about people, who are Moslems, but will state that they are not only for the purpose of entering the USA?

JJ
Again, you would have to consider the country of origin as the main consideration.

Assaf
And with all this confusion, you will still have to deal with the exceptions you described later on in your post.

JJ
No solution would be easy, but I think we would have to have an exception policy. This would help to ease public relations with Arabic nations which would be strained by any action we take.

In fact, I would suppose the powers-that-be will not take action like this for fear of offending people. Instead there will be things going on behind the scenes just as offensive, but not publicized.

There are a number of other measures which have been proposed.

(1) A national ID card. Many freedom loving people are alarmed by this idea, but we pretty much already have such a card and that is a driver's license, which has little effect on our overall freedom.

I view a national ID card as an additional inconvenience more than a freedom issue. Instead or adding to inconvenience to U.S. citizens I would suggest this. All drivers' licenses should have stated on then whether or not the person is a native-born U.S. citizen. If he is not then he should have a national ID card containing a computer strip with all pertinent information contained therein.

(2) Additional government powers of surveillance, such as examining e-mail, web surfing activities etc of suspects.

Again, many freedom lovers are alarmed by this encroachment. But this has more to do with potential intrusion rather than freedom.

For all I know, some clandestine figure has secretly read every e-mail I have ever written. If so, am I any less free because of it? Not really. For all I care every man and his dog can read my e-mails. Even so I do realize that many are very concerned about this.

Consider this. If you have a fatal attraction type person interested in you he can probably track you better in a free society than an authoritarian one. He has complete freedom to park by your place of work or residence and keep track of all your comings and goings. He can follow you and determine who your friends are and your shopping habits. When you put your garbage out there is nothing stopping him from stealing it and finding out more about you.

In addition to this the can obtain a credit report on you and for $39.95 from some sources on the internet he can get a fairly complete secret write-up on you with all kinds of private information.

The point is with or without the FBI having additional powers of surveillance we are much more open books than were the citizens of the Roman Empire. We are coming closer all the time to the fulfillment of the prophecy of Jesus:

"For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops." Luke 12:2-3

Like it or not we are entering an era, irrespective of how much freedom we have, where it is difficult to keep secrets for as soon as a message goes out from your computer through your "housetop" into the internet it is pretty much open to the eyes of the world.

This openness works both ways. Not only can governments keep better track of its people, but people can also keep better track of their government. The moment the government now does something suspect it is only days before the whole internet community is discussing it and petitions against abuse begin to circulate and letters to congressmen are written.

This is one reason China and other totalitarian states fear the internet and are doing all in their power to shield their citizens from full access.

I would support some types of surveillance if it were limited to real terrorism or horrendous crime. I would not support it for lesser crimes including drug traffic and an increase of powers should be definitely forbidden by the IRS. The honest citizen has enough worries about paying taxes as it is now.

(3) Increase monitoring powers at our borders to prevent the entrance of illegal aliens.

There isn't much evidence that we should be concerned about Canadians or Mexicans as far as terrorism goes, but terrorists from other nations have entered our country illegally trough their borders.

Therefore an increase of surveillance at the borders only makes sense. How to do this effectively would require a whole treatise, so I'll just encourage this direction and leave it at that.

(4) Increased powers to detain foreign nationals. There definitely needs to be an increase of power here. How extensive of an increase and the protection of rights, is being debated at the moment of this writing. Hopefully the correct balance will be achieved.

Perhaps more important than any of these, is to work with our faithful Moslem friends who live in this country. Many of them are just as outraged about this disaster as we are and in some ways they have suffered more negative effects than any other group of Americans.

We need to show these people that we trust them and they are welcome. Here is a place where the government could actually do something positive. There could be established an exemplary Moslem citizen-of-the-month program with a dozen or so runner-up awards given. These awards would be announced on the news and possibly mentioned on the Presidents weekly radio address. Shows like Dateline would be encouraged to do a short story on the winner each month.

This would give U.S. Moslems additional pride in being Americans and make them more willing to cooperate in weeding out the bad blood among them so they can live in this country with some pride.

As we cultivate good will among them we need to solicit their increased cooperation in reporting suspicious characters or terrorists suspects. The more we help the peace-loving Moslems to feel like full-fledged Americans involved in our way of life, the more allegiance they will have to this country.

"The friendliest country in the world, possibly the universe." - Lead sentence of the web site Afghanistan Online (www.afghan-web.com)