This is about Americans, and the "War on Terror."
We all know what it is. We all know what started it. We all know what kind of people are behind it, because there is a common thread.
Yet, somehow, we're not supposed to say who they are.
When you think about it, it's one of the things that really makes this country amazing. We have to all be treated as potential terrorists because to single out any one particular group or a particular look or a particular religious group would be "profiling" or "racism" or just plan old fashioned "hate."
So grandma from Alabama gets patted down before she gets on a plane just like the farmer from Iowa or the barber from Los Angeles or the little girl from Albany. All of us have to be treated as suspects because, well, you never know.
Even if you have a pretty good idea.
I think it says something good about Americans that most of us are so willing to give up personal freedom and accept further government intrusion into our every day lives because it might be unfair to simply single out a "type" of person most like the ones who commit most of the acts of terror against free countries of the world.
That's an amazing amount of tolerance that goes on with comparatively little real protest.
We've made mistakes before. In World War II, nobody likes to talk about our country rounding up Japanese Americans on the west coast and putting them into isolation because the people who bombed Pearl Harbor, the people we were at war with all over the Pacific, just happened to be, well, Japanese.
In World War I, we started calling German Shepherds "Police Dogs'' and Hamburgers "Liberty Steaks" and change the names of so many German-sounding everyday items because, well, the people that were at the heart of World War I just happened to be, uh, German.
I realize I'm treading dangerously close to political incorrectness here, and I'm trying not to cross that line. I don't want to say that we should just admit that most of the terrorists we are fighting right now happen to be followers of Islam - which is true - and justify what they do because of how they interpret their Islamic teaching.
But just like members of the Ku Klux Klan claim to be Christians but certainly not all Christians are members of the Ku Klux Klan (and most Christians condemn the KKK), I know that while it seems the vast majority of international terrorism seems rooted in Islamic beliefs, not everyone who follows the teaching of Islam is a terrorists.
I would feel better if we had some more followers of Islam who took a louder, more active stance against Islamic extremists. I mean, as much as you don't want people to look at follower of Islam as potential terrorists, surely the followers of Islam have to understand why that might possibly happen. Would it be so terrible for an Islamic protest march against Islamic extremists; for Imams to come out and publicly denounce Al Qaeda (actually they have: see here and here --
we just don't hear nearly enough about it).
Still, it says something about us as a nation that we're willing to inconvenience ourselves to the extreme in the aftermath of 9-11 to try to keep people of Islamic faith from feeling singled out in this War on Terror.
Say what you want. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what the most out-spoken and active enemies of this country have in common.
Yet as crazy and divided as this country seems at times, when I turn on the TV before an NFL football game and hear the cheers as a huge American flag is unfurled on the football field and hear an entire stadium singing along on the national anthem, followed in some cases of chants of "U-S-A! U-S-A!" I am reminded that for all the fighting we do among ourselves, when the time comes, Americans come together pretty well to stick up for each other.
Including Arab-Americans (staying in line with the practice of hyphenated Americans).
Even if it hurts us.
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