Some good replies, let me make a few statements in response, since time doesn't allow me to go post by post.
*My point is not so much that Arab-Americans are or are not discriminated against. Its more the following:
A. Our govt. encourages the untrained, unprofessional public to do surveillance. Well, guess what happens when untrained people do surveillance... you get crappy results.
B. Its not that he was hassled once, but now he's hassled every time. By now, he should be clear and off the list, but he isn't.
C. When I said this happens "every day", what I meant was that every day there are new stories generated of people being abused, mishandled, mistreated, etc... when traveling by air. And, no, I don't mean the occassional time where you're randomly picked to turn your pockets inside out. Seriously, it would not be hard at all to maintain a blog of documented incidents where people are trampled on, moreorless, by these agencies, etc..
D. There's very little you do to get off these "lists" once you're on them.
E. Lastly, someone said the "program is working". ROFL First off, I'm not saying that every measure we take is bad or stupid. Negatory. I'm saying that much, if not most, of the stuff we do for air travel is unnecessary and pointless, even dangerous in some ways. Secondly, the idea taking away water bottles and shaving gel and x-raying shoes has somehow stopped another 9/11 is completely asinine. As I said in the OP, if you think the next attack is going to be something like 9/11 you are a fool.
F. If someone sits next to me on a plane and freely offers polite conversation his hobby.... yeah, that's definitely a terrorist. Because we all know that terrorists love to casually chitchat about their targets and plans to random strangers in environments where they know people are already borderline freaked out. Seriously, that's mental. ROFL, because people have never had the "mission" of visiting all state capitals (where, OMG they will probably take photos). What if my "mission" was to visit "all the American League ballparks" this summer. You do realize those are much easier and juicier targets than an airplane where the moment I took out my exacto knife 15 freaked out Americans would beat me to death with my own arms, right?
My big picture thing is here is simple:
We're misreacting to the terrorists. We're turning citizens into snitches, we're punishing 1000s and 1000s of innocent people for nothing more than sharing a name w/ someone or being reported by one of these untrained snitches, we're creating an environment where we are trained to live in a state of fear fueled by misinformation and stupidity.
Essentially, we've become terrorfied.
You seriously need to drop your condescending attitude, especially since you clearly know so little about the US.
