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OK, we’re all a little edgy, but can’t we take a joke?
It appears a terrorist scheme overheard at a roadside
diner in Calhoun, Georgia on September 12 was
just that.
Certain facts are in dispute, and there have been
inaccurate news reports
I will not repeat here. That said, three men of Middle Eastern
descent apparently put on a show after deciding they didn’t like the
way another patron looked at them.
“If they’re mourning 9/11 what are they going to do
about 9/13?” one asked, while another cracked “If we don’t have
enough to bring it down I have contacts.” All three reportedly had
a good guffaw over the September 11 anniversary.
That’s funny stuff all right, a regular laugh riot. The
customer in the next booth thought it might be a put-on but decided
not to risk it. She jotted down the license numbers of the vehicles
in which the men were traveling and called the cops. Sheriff’s
officers stopped them in Florida several hours later; the ensuing
investigation closed a major freeway for the better part of a day.
No weapons or evidence of a plot were found.
The men, whom police described as uncooperative, now
claim the woman
fabricated the incident.
Law enforcement officials who questioned them originally supported
her story, though have since said that conclusion is premature.
Who has the greater incentive to lie: a person having a
quiet breakfast or three friends who abruptly discover their little
prank might have crossed the line to felony threat? Let’s assume
the woman’s account is generally accurate. Did she overreact,
biased by the men’s ethnicity? Did jumpy sheriff’s deputies foul up
a day’s commute over nothing more than one person’s suspicion? Were
the men’s rights trampled, as some quickly declared?
Citizens in a civil society have some duty to look out
for each other. It may not be the law but civilizations are
ultimately defined by the character of their people, not their
laws. My guess is that Calhoun, Georgia is not a major terror
target and any “threat” the customer overheard was presumably
directed elsewhere. If she had ignored it she’d have neither broken
the law nor been at any personal risk.
Countless public officials, from the president down,
have told us to be vigilant. Law enforcement agencies across the
country have formed highly publicized task forces to deal with any
menace. Two days before the episode in Calhoun, the Office of
Homeland Security raised the nation’s terror alert status from
yellow to orange. Don’t ask me what that means, but it’s not good.
Unless she made the whole thing up, the woman in Georgia
did exactly what we’ve been told to do for a year. More
importantly, she did what people in a moral nation should do, with
or without prompting.
In return, she has been ridiculed by some for everything
from her accent and state of residence to her appearance, exactly
the traits critics say she reacted to in the three Middle Eastern
men. Others question how anyone with a room temperature IQ could
believe real terrorists would be dumb enough to discuss a terror
plot in public.
Maybe she reads the newspapers. Last month the
Associated Press reported that an al Qaida operative in Hamburg,
Germany
told a local librarian
of the plan to destroy the World Trade Center over a year in
advance. Similar indiscretions have occurred elsewhere. Terrorists
who pull suicide duty are, by definition, expendable – and probably
a few virgins shy of paradise when it comes to common sense.
It is good that we are concerned with the rights of the
men, but rights come with responsibilities. Let’s hope the
experience of the woman in Georgia won’t discourage others from
honoring theirs. |
