Connecting Egyptian dots

(WordPress was good enough to save the post I was working on when my son got hurt, so here it is. Sadly, but not surprisingly, it’s not as good as I remembered….)

Apparently I was not the only one to notice that the missing Egyptian students dispersed to some remarkably diverse locations when they hit American soil. Writing at The American Thinker, Frederick J. Chiaventone, a military counter-terrorism expert, sees them as a potential link in a chain that includes Ahmadinijad’s exultation about something big going down, increased Al Qaeda video traffic, and cell phones, many cell phones:

In sum it doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out that there are still some very dangerous, fanatical young men who would turn the freedoms available to them in a democratic environment against the very people who would offer them in a spirit of generosity and openness.

And what reaction do the TSA and Homeland Security have? All airline passengers must now remove their shoes and turn in their bottled water and shampoo. Well, I certainly feel better about that.

Chiaventone’s point, and I think it’s a good one, is that there are a lot of fanatical Middle Eastern males walking, talking and quacking like Jihadist ducks.  With that much obvious Jihadist noise going on, maybe we should be looking for jihadists in our midst.  Our fanatically PC fear of hurting someone’s feelings is ridiculous.

By the way, I was suddenly reminded of a thirty year old story.  Back in the days when Arabs and Jews could still be friends — at least in America — we had very good Arab friends, a mix of Muslims and Christians (that was in the days when Muslim and Christian Arabs would still marry).  The Christian man traveled to Israel fairly often and, every time, he got pulled aside and hassled by the airline.  This always happened on El Al.  And he always complained bitterly on his return.  And he always flew El Al — because it was the safest way to travel.  That is, much as the profiling deeply offended him, he still preferred flying the airline that took the time to make sure he wouldn’t die en route.  (After 9/11 I read somewhere, and I don’t know if its true, that African Americans strongly supported racial profiling of Middle Eastern airline passengers.  If it’s true, it’s certainly a thought to chew on.)