Each major 9/11 anniversary, journalists rehash the horrible events from every imaginable angle, except one that’s just not part of any respectable Narrative: Did George W. Bush’s campaign against racial profiling of Arabs by airport personnel let Mohamed Atta and company get away with 9/11?
Here’s an article I wrote for UPI on October 23, 2000, a little less than a year before 9/11 and shortly after Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush called in his second debate with Al Gore for less airport security scrutiny of Arab passengers for terrorist tendencies:
With violence flaring in the Middle East and domestic electioneering reaching a climax, America is witnessing the increasing difficulties of formulating an international policy that’s both activist and coherent in an era when mass immigration is giving an ever-widening array of American ethnic groups their first taste of real political power.
At a time when America’s support of Israel has inflamed anti-American passions in many Muslim lands,
October 2000 was at the beginning of the Second Intifada in Israel and Palestine. On September 28, 2000, Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon had provocatively marched to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, a holy site for both Jews and Muslims. This set off Palestinian riots and violent Israeli repression.
The following year saw an increase in suicide bombings of buses and pizza parlors in Israel, and the suicide-murder of ~3,000 in America on 9/11.
a bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives came within minutes on Thursday evening of passing a symbolic resolution to please Armenian-Americans that would have insulted Turkey, the most pro-Western nation in the Islamic Middle East.
Another ethnic interest group with a similar-sounding name was also flexing its muscles in the closing weeks of the election campaign. To gratify Arab-American voters in the swing state of Michigan, in the October 11th Presidential debate Republican nominee George W. Bush called for weakening two counter-terrorism policies. “Arab-Americans are [racially] profiled in what’s called secret evidence. People are stopped, and we got to do something about that,” Governor Bush said. “My friend, Sen. Spence Abraham [the Arab-American Republic Senator from Michigan], is pushing a law to make sure that . . . Arab-Americans are treated with real respect.”
Although Governor Bush conflated two issues, Arab Americans appreciated the gesture. According to a spokesperson for a leading Arab-American organization, their highest domestic priority is the repeal of the “secret evidence” section of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act. To prevent terrorist gangs from murdering U.S. government secret informants, this law allows the government to provide evidence from unidentified moles in the immigration hearings of foreigners suspected of terrorist links. The government has deported or detained a number of Arabs hoping to immigrate to the U.S. due to testimony by witnesses they were never allowed to confront.
Similarly, people of Arab descent are stopped and searched at airports more often than many other ethnic groups. This is because the secret “profiles” given security workers advising them whom to watch most closely are believed to refer to the fact that a disproportionate number of hijackers and bombers have been Arabs.
The day after Governor Bush’s remarks, 17 American sailors died in a terrorist attack in the Arab nation of Yemen. The bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, however, did not stop Vice President Al Gore from echoing Bush’s calls to end these two anti-terrorist techniques in a meeting with Arab-American leaders on October 14th. Ironically, on October 20th an Egyptian-born immigrant Ali A. Mohamed plead guilty in Federal District Court to helping Osama Bin Laden plan the 1998 bombing of the America Embassy in Kenya.
These two fast-growing immigrant groups are challenging America’s traditional pro-Turkey and pro-Israel policy.
New York mayors have long conducted their own foreign policy revolving around the traditional Three I’s -- Ireland, Italy, and Israel. The 1965 Immigration Act, however, opened the door to a host of new nationalities with ancient conflicting interests in the Old World. Today, these new ethnic groups are coming of age politically, complicating the foreign policy landscape.
Running a complex and intrusive foreign policy has always been easiest for dictators, such as Hitler and Stalin. The adeptness with which the British Empire managed a Byzantine overseas policy in the late 19th century shows that in a parliamentary system, foreign affairs are most effectively governed by oligarchic elites answering to a nation with few immigrants. With few non-British ethnics allowed to vote, the British government could run its empire with cold-eyed expedience. In contrast, the most stable multiethnic republic, Switzerland, has prudently chosen to have no foreign policy whatsoever. To prevent civil war among its German, French, and Italian-speaking citizens during European wars, Switzerland espouses absolute neutrality backed by a well-entrenched defensive military.
Until this year, Armenian-Americans and Arab-Americans have enjoyed quite different track records of effectiveness in Washington. Americans of Armenian descent number only somewhat over one million, and boast but a single member of Congress. Still, they’ve organized a Congressional Caucus that at last count included 96 of the 435 members of the House of Representatives.
Armenians, especially after they’ve spent a few decades in America, tend to become prosperous business owners and professionals. English novelist Evelyn Waugh called them “a race of rare competence.” Not surprisingly, they tilt Republican on taxes and regulation. The most successful Armenian-American politician was George Deukmejian, two-term Republican governor of California. About half live in that state, with the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale as their hub. Still, they are open to wooing by Democrats on Armenian issues, since they’re deeply devoted to the welfare of their fellow Armenians. For example, entertainment mogul Kirk Kerkorian recently gave more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help strengthen Armenia, which only regained it’s independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Armenian lobby’s highest priority has been a nonbonding resolution instructing the President to refer to the 1915 massacre of Armenians living under the Turkish-run Ottoman Empire as a “genocide.” This election year it roared through the House International Relations committee on a 24-11 vote. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert said that he believed it “would have enjoyed support among the majority of the House.” Moments from coming up for a vote, however, Hastert blocked it from consideration. He announced, “The President believes that passage of this resolution may adversely impact the situation in the Middle East and risk the lives of Americans.”
While disappointed at the setback, Ross Vartian, executive director of the Armenian Assembly of America said in an interview, “Time is definitely on our side on this issue.”
Although Arab-Americans outnumber Armenian-Americans roughly three to one, Arabs had been an under-achieving middleweight in ethnic pressure group politics. In contrast, they’ve done fairly well as individual politicians, achieving exactly the same representation in Congress as in the population. Currently, there is one Arab-American U.S. Senator, Republican Spencer Abraham of Michigan, and six members of the House, including John Sununu Jr., the son of the former New Hampshire Governor and Chief of Staff in George Bush’s White House. Arab-Americans have traditionally favored the Democrats on civil rights, since they often perceive themselves as victims of discrimination. They’ve preferred the Republicans on taxes, however, since they are somewhat more prosperous than the national average. Four of the seven Arab members of Congress are Democrats.
The majority of Arab Americans are Christian, as are all seven members of Congress. Muslims, whether Arab or not, may face something of a glass ceiling. Although Muslims and Jews are now fairly equal in the U.S. population with around six million each, no Muslim has yet made it above the state legislator level.
Christian Arabs, however, have assimilated so well into the American melting pot that a list of famous Arab-Americans might appear to simply be a random selection of American celebrities. Many might not notice that rock legend Frank Zappa, quarterbacks Doug Flutie and Jeff George, disk jockey Casey Kasem, Health and Human Services cabinet secretary Donna Shalala, pollster John Zogby, and Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal are all Arab-Americans. Even Mexican-born actress Salma Hayek is half Lebanese.
Yet, despite all this individual accomplishment, as a group Arab-Americans have lagged far behind their rivals in clout. In a modern America enthralled with multiculturalism, however, American-born Christian-Arabs may blend in too well to achieve much group power.
Peter Abajian of the Armenian Assembly of America is a sympathetic observer of Arab-Americans’ struggle for political power. He says Armenians tend to be grateful to Arabs. After the massacres of 1915, many Armenians found refuge in Arab lands that were also rebelling against Turkey’s Ottoman Empire.
The most important cause of the difference in lobbying effectiveness, Abajian believes, is that the Arab-American community doesn’t come from any one place. In contrast, the Armenians of America come, originally, from one compact nation. The Arab homelands range from Morocco in the West to Iraq in the East and from Lebanon in the North to Yemen in the South. Arabs are also divided into Muslims and Christians, with further subdivisions into Protestant and Roman, Orthodox and Coptic Catholic. In contrast, most Armenians belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church. Abajian offers this advice to any ethnic lobby: “Put forward issues you believe are in America’s best interest.”
Guler Koknar, a spokeswoman for the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, adds another reason Armenians have done so well in rallying Congress. Turkish-Americans are a tiny and politically inactive immigrant group. There are only about one fourth as many Turks as Armenians in America. Turkish mass blue-collar emigration has gone to Europe, leaving only a well-educated elite to head for America. Here, they’ve spread out across the country too much to obtain critical mass in any one district. Also, the U.S. State Department has long endorsed Turkey, our fellow ally in NATO, as a model for what the U.S. hopes the rest of the Islamic world will someday become. Therefore, Koknar says, “Turkish-Americans didn’t feel much need to organize.”
If the Armenian-American lobby is a hard-punching bantamweight dominating a listless Turkish featherweight, the Arab-American interest group was long an underachieving middleweight that barely ever laid a glove on the undisputed heavyweight champion of ethnic lobbies. Fortune Magazine’s 1999 survey of the most powerful lobbying organizations in Washington listed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee as number four. No other ethnic or foreign-oriented organization made this list of 114.
Anti-Arab prejudice was so strong that in 1984 Democratic Presidential nominee Walter Mondale actually returned campaign contributions from Arab-Americans to avoid alienating Jewish-Americans. Interestingly, Senator Joseph Lieberman is respected by Arab lobbyists for playing a key role in getting the 1992 Clinton campaign to treat Arab Democrats with respect.
Nonetheless, the Jewish Vice Presidential nominee’s place on Democratic ticket appears to be undermining Al Gore’s appeal to the Arab-American rank and file. Although Clinton won handily among Arabs in 1996, Gore trails Bush 40% to 28% in the latest Zogby poll. This poll was conducted even before Bush’s now famous appeal to Arabs. Ralph Nader, the son of Lebanese immigrants, is third with 16%. Only 50% of those who say they voted for Clinton last time think they’ll vote for Gore in 2000.
Osama Siblani is the publisher of the Arab American News in Dearborn, Michigan, the capital of Arab America. “Lieberman’s culture and religion are embedded,” he comments. “Lieberman is already committed to Israel in his soul.”
Why does this long dismissed minority suddenly matter? The spasm of interest in Arab-Americans stems from their being concentrated in states with large numbers of electoral votes. One third of all Arab-Americans live in California, New York, and Michigan. In Michigan they make up about 4% of the vote. There’s even a remote chance that in an extremely tight election, Michigan’s Arab community could decide who is the next President.
The influence of Arab-Americans is likely to fade temporarily after the election, when Michigan is no longer the center of the political universe. Nonetheless, the continued influx of Arab immigrants means that in the words of Daniel Pipes, the Jewish editor of the Middle East Quarterly, “The vector of Arab-American power is up, and fast.”
The success of Arab-Americans this year in rallying heavyweight politicians against “secret evidence” may mark a turning point in the long, previously one-sided political struggle between Arabs and Jews in the U.S. Arab-Americans seem to be on the verge of wining on an issue opposed by leading Jewish powerhouses. On May 23, the Anti-Defamation League gave testimony before Congress, co-signed by the American Jewish Congress and B’nai B’rith, in favor of keeping some version of secret evidence.
There is some room for compromise on secret evidence and airport profiling. A Jewish counter-terrorism researcher suggested, for example, that airport security personnel should be trained to be more courteous. Nonetheless, anti-terrorism policy remains essentially a zero-sum contest between Arab-Americans and Jewish-Americans. The stronger the measures, the more innocent Arabs who will be harassed. The weaker the measures, the more Jews who are threatened by political violence.
Besides their ever-increasing numbers, Arab-Americans are gaining power because they’ve now mastered the traditional liberal Jewish vocabulary that elevates what might seem like practical clashes in power politics into tests of moral principle. On secret evidence and airport profiling, Arab lobbies have put Jewish organizations in the uncomfortable position of championing law and order over civil liberties, racial equality, and immigrants’ rights.
As mass immigration makes America more multicultural, the number and strength of new ethnic lobbies grows. This will have long-term consequences for the interests of traditional top dogs. Jewish-Americans are especially likely to lose a certain amount of power. The American Jewish Committee forecasts that the Jewish-American population will fall by one third over the next 80 years, reducing Jews to well under 1% of a population swelling to over 500 million due to immigration
Pipes, a fervent supporter of Israel, argues that the globalization of the American population will work to make American policy toward Israel more like the world norm. “Internationally, the anti-Israeli forces have been stronger. Domestically, the pro-Israeli forces have been stronger. That balance will be challenged in the future.”
Some of these predictions from 2000 seem pretty prescient in describing the post-October 7, 2023 world of Zohran Mamdani and America’s war with Iran.
While it’s conceivable that America might respond to multiculturalism by adopting the Swiss solution of not pestering anyone abroad in order to maintain tranquility at home, the trend seems to have been in the opposite direction. Further, the end of the Cold War has meant that the organizing logic behind American foreign interventions is gone, leaving foreign policy up for grabs among competing power groups. As America’s population becomes more of a scale model of the world’s, all of humanity’s conflicts will have their passionate partisans within the U.S. It should make for interesting times.
Then three days later on October 26, 2000, I put on my polemical hat for VDARE:
Something that was said during the October 11 Bush-Gore Debate II struck me profoundly.
Well, actually, that’s a bald-faced lie. Barely anything either candidate said during the entire debate has even lodged in my memory.
But Peter Brimelow insisted I read what the two candidates had to say about racial profiling. And here are excerpts from their scintillating slam-bang exchange:
Tweedledee: “Because, imagine what it, what it is like for someone to be singled out unfairly, unjustly and feel the unfair force of law simply because of race or ethnicity.”
Tweedledum: “I can’t imagine what it would be like to be singled out because of race and stopped and harassed.”
This debate over racial profiling shows how utterly divorced American political discourse has become from personal reality. Every single person who lives in a diverse part of the country racially profiles every other pedestrian as he walks down the street at night. Jesse Jackson notoriously admitted that he does exactly that – and sighs with relief when he finds that the footsteps following him don’t belong to a young black male.
The reason we all do this is simple: African Americans commit far more violent crimes than anybody else. For example, according to official Clinton Administration statistics, in 1998 on a per capita basis blacks were seven times more murderous than whites. And this ratio is down significantly from the early nineties when the black crack wars were blazing. [http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm]
Indeed, the black-white ratio would be even higher if the FBI didn’t insist upon counting most Hispanics as whites. This obfuscatory tactic makes it hard to break out precise crime figures for Hispanic groups. Most estimates place their rates of violence as well below those of African Americans – but well above those of whites. For example, Fox Butterfield reported in The New York Times on August 10, 2000 that Hispanics are imprisoned at a rate three times higher than “Anglo” whites.
Actually, now I come to think about it, I do recall meeting one (1) man who never engaged in racial profiling. At a wedding reception in 1985, I got to talking with someone from Grant’s Pass, Oregon. He was most upset by how whites (other than himself) worried more about black muggers than muggers of other races. “That’s pure racism!” he insisted.
I proposed to him a thought experiment. Say your wife’s car runs out of gas in the middle of the night in a desolate neighborhood. She has no idea which way to walk to find a gas station. However, if she walks one way she has to pass by a half dozen black youths lounging on a corner. If she walks the other way, she would have to pass by a half dozen Indian immigrant youths. Which way would you prefer she went?
“I would be completely indifferent,” he replied.
“Well, then, for your sake, I’m glad you live in Grass Pants, Oregon.”
“Where I live is irrelevant!” he responded triumphantly. “I’ve already been mugged three times!”
I was quite defeated by his logic.
The plain fact is that cultural diversity and human biodiversity are decisive in predicting who will commit crimes. Men are an order of magnitude more likely to commit crimes than women. Old people and children commit enormously fewer than post-pubescents. Blacks are a couple of orders of magnitude more likely to commit violent crimes than Japanese Americans. Etc. etc.
Thus there are only two alternatives to “racial profiling.”
The cops could abandon proactive attempts to prevent suspicious characters from committing crimes. Instead, they could retreat to a completely reactive posture.
Or they could institute racial quotas. They could randomly stop whites and East Asians whom they are confident are no threat to the public safety in order to be allowed to occasionally stop the most dangerous-looking blacks and Hispanics.
In either case, the upshot will be the same: the long decline in crime rates, brought about by some fairly brutal in-your-face policing and a doubling of the number of jail inmates, is just about over. Thus the crime rate has already shot up in Los Angeles since the Ramparts “civil rights” scandal hamstrung the LAPD.
Whoever gets elected in November, the same “solution” is coming to your town.
And, of course, here’s the article I wrote for UPI on the evening of September 11, 2001, which I often repost on round number anniversaries of 9/11:
With the surfeit of events, it was actually published a few days later. But I wrote it the evening of 9/11.
LOS ANGELES, Sep. 11 -- Ironically, in an attempt to appeal to the growing number of Arab-American and Muslim voters, exactly eleven months ago George W. Bush called for weakening airport security procedures aimed at deterring hijackers.
On Oct. 11, 2000, during the second presidential debate, the Republican candidate attacked two anti-terrorist policies that had long irritated Arab citizens of the U.S.
At present [i.e., the evening of 9/11], of course, there is no definite evidence that Arabs or Muslims were involved in today’s terrorist assaults. Many incorrectly assumed after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that Middle Easterners were involved. Nor is there direct evidence that Bush’s attack on airline safety procedures made the four simultaneous hijackings easier to pull off.
Bush said during the nationally televised debate, “Arab-Americans are racially profiled in what’s called secret evidence. People are stopped, and we got to do something about that.” Then-Governor Bush went on, “My friend, Sen. Spence Abraham [the Arab-American Republican Senator from Michigan], is pushing a law to make sure that, you know, Arab-Americans are treated with respect. So racial profiling isn’t just an issue at the local police forces. It’s an issue throughout our society. And as we become a diverse society, we’re going to have to deal with it more and more.”
Bush’s plug for Senator Abraham was intended to help Abraham in close re-election battle, which he ultimately lost. (Abraham is now the Bush Administration’s Secretary of Energy.) More important personally to Bush was the swing state of Michigan’s 18 electoral votes, which Al Gore eventually won narrowly. Arab-Americans, centered in Dearborn and Flint, make up about four percent of the population of Michigan, the most of any state.
In the debate, Bush conflated two separate policies that Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans felt discriminate against them: the heightened suspicions faced by Middle Eastern-looking travelers at airport security checkpoints and the government’s use of “secret evidence” in immigration hearings of suspected terrorists. Yet, despite Bush’s confusion, Arab-Americans appreciated his gesture. Four days after the debate, the Arab-American Political Action Committee endorsed Bush.
The day after Bush’s remarks, 17 American sailors died in a terrorist attack in the Arab nation of Yemen. The bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, however, did not stop Vice President Al Gore from echoing Bush’s calls to end these two anti-terrorist techniques in a meeting with Arab-American leaders on October 14, 2000.
According to a spokesperson for a leading Arab-American organization, people of Arab descent are stopped and searched at airports more often than many other ethnic groups. Some refer to this as Flying While Arab or Flying While Muslim. These terms are intended as plays on the popular phrase “Driving While Black,” which is widely used to criticize police departments for stopping more black than white motorists.
This year, both Bush and his Attorney General John Ashcroft have called for an end to racial profiling.
The Federal Aviation Administration provides airline and airport personnel with the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening system to help them identify suspicious travelers. It relies on a secret profile of the characteristics of typical hijackers and terrorists.
Bush’s Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has said that “the security procedures are not based on the race, ethnicity, religion or gender of passengers” Yet, the system is widely believed to use other information - such as whether the traveler is going to or coming from the Middle East - that tends to “disparately impact” Arab and Muslims.
None of the ethnic rights groups, however, has offered any data to dispute the widespread assumption that in the three decades since the Palestine Liberation Organization invented skyjacking, a disproportionate number of hijackers and plane bombers have had Middle Eastern ties.
Nonetheless, the Bush Administration publicly agrees with the civil rights organizations that even a nonracial airport profiling system that had merely a disparate impact on Arabs and Muslims would be objectionable. Secretary Mineta said, “We also want to assure that in practice, the system does not disproportionately select members of any particular minority group.” Of course, if Arabs and Muslims are disproportionately more likely to hijack airliners, and the profiling system does not end up disproportionately targeting them, then system wouldn’t work very well at preventing hijackings.
To ensure that no disparate impact is occurring, the Bush Administration carried out in June a three-week study, first planned by the Clinton Administration, of whether or not profiling at the Detroit airport disparately impacts Arabs.
The results of the study have not been released. Nor is it known whether the secret profiles have been relaxed - they are kept secret in order to keep hijackers guessing.
However, on June 6th Attorney General Ashcroft told Congress, “We want the right training, we want the right kind of discipline, we want the right kind of detection measures and the right kind of remediation measures, because racial profiling doesn’t belong in the federal government’s operational arsenal.”
Besides airport profiling, Arab-American activists long demanded the repeal of the “secret evidence” section of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act. To prevent terrorist gangs from murdering U.S. government secret informants, this law allows the government to provide evidence from unidentified moles in the immigration hearings of foreigners suspected of terrorist links. The government has deported or detained a number of Arabs hoping to immigrate to the U.S. due to testimony by witnesses they were never allowed to confront.
Although Abraham’s bill repealing the use of secret evidence died in 2000, during his confirmation hearing, Ashcroft endorsed the ban on secret evidence. He told Congress in June that the Bush Administration has not used secret evidence.
As the practice has come under increasing attack, the number of Arab immigrants detained on secret evidence has dropped sharply. Hussein Ibish of the American Arab Anti-discrimination Committee told UPI in June, “Two years ago there were 25 in prison,” he said. “Now we’re down to only one.”
I dunno, but 25 years later, this article still strikes me (at least) as fairly relevant when thinking about several of the major events and issues of the 21st Century, such as 9/11, Mayor Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk policy in New York that appears to have lowered crime there long-term, and Black Lives Matter. But practically nobody ever remembers this Bush Administration anti-racial profiling policy that Bush promised in a debate with Al Gore that was watched by tens of millions.
Then, about five years later, we heard from the airport ticket clerk who checked in Mohamed Atta for his initial flight on 9/11 out of Portland, Maine.
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