If Michael Yon Were Some Unknown Muslim....

By Steve Hynd

Michael Yon, the favorite "independent national security journalist" of the far right, got momentarily detained today at Seattle airport. It's pretty much a nonhappening but you know the armchair warriors will be up in arms. So far, we've only gotten Yon's version of events:

Got arrested at the Seattle airport for refusing to say how much money I make. (The uniformed ones say I was not "arrested", but they definitely handcuffed me.) Their videos and audios should show that I was polite, but simply refused questions that had nothing to do with national security. Port authority police eve...ntually came -- they were professionals -- and rescued me from the border bullies.

James Joyner is right - something doesn't add up.

While I’ve never flown in and out of Seattle, I’ve flow in and out of the country several times post-9/11 and have never been asked, coming or going, how much I made or anything more personal than “What’s the purpose for your visit?”   If, however, they are asking these sort of insipid questions — let alone handcuffing people who refuse to answer them — our airline security system has even more problems than I thought.

I'd be the last person to defend TSA's lunatic and professionally paranoid bullies, but Yon has a track record of flouting the rules and sensationalizing events. Which brings me to the real reason for my bothering to mention this nonhappening - Michelle Malkin's ZOMG111!One post on Yon's temporary detainment.

I’ve met Michael and have blogged about his enterprising war coverage as an embed in Iraq and Afghanistan for years. The idea of him being treated as a national security threat and handcuffed is as ridiculous as anything we’ve seen from Janet Clown-itano and her cadre...We’re at Code Red Elmo on the Homeland Insecurity Scale.

It's hypocrisy pure and simple, from a woman who has often written about the need for far stricter border controls. Can anyone doubt that if Yon were some Anonymous Ahmed from a Muslim nation then Malkin's attitude would have been very much that he should have followed the rules, answered any questions the nice man with the badge asked him and forgot about making any song-and-dance about civil rights that might lead to "a CAIR lawsuit by the civil liberties absolutists...the very people who make a living intimidating and suing vigilant Americans who take homeland security seriously"?

Taking homeland security lightly - IOKIYAR.

Comments

[Anon]

Umm, what about this doesn't add up? Joyner is definitely in the minority if he's never been asked personal questions by customs/immigration (not the TSA) at entry.

Above all, however, immigration agents already know how much money a returning traveler makes because the passport database is linked to SSA and IRS employment records databases. A border thug who asks about employment is asking in order to a) embarrass a traveler, b) exercise dominance over the victim, or c) confirm identity.

Not answering the question doesn't preserve your privacy because border thugs already know the answer.

The border thugs also have ready access to your credit history and, in many cases, your medical records.

[BJ Bjornson]

Now be fair Steve, it isn't just the Muslims, known or unknown, that Malkin and her ilk would be all over for not kowtowing to the border thugs. They have also been pretty quick to harp on anyone with liberal leanings who happen to complain about being harassed by the TSA/Customs/Police/Homeland Security. After all, liberals are a bunch of terrorist-lovers nearly as bad as the terrorists themselves.

And of course they’re upset that one of their own may have gotten harassed by Customs. I mean, don’t these border folks know that conservatives are by definition the only True Patriots (tm) and are thus exempt from all of the police state apparatus they wish the rest of us to be subjected to?

In any case, illustrative of the reason why I avoid traveling to the US unless absolutely necessary.

[KevinD]

Coming back from overseas two years ago, through Detroit, the TSA guy asked me where I was employed. I told him I was not employed, having just been laid off. He asked me what I was doing traveling when I was un-employed. Explaining to him him that I had a healthy severance, was basicly on an extended vacation/sabatical, and that it was really none of his business, didn't seem to comfort him. Afterward while waiting for my girlfriend to get through the TSA spanking machine, I got to observe a eighty-something Catholic priest who could barely walk being frisked and stripped down for setting off the scanner.