Tarek Albasti is an Egyptian immigrant who married an American woman, brought seven of his Egyptian friends to America and was enrolled in flight school when America was hit on 9-11. Based on a tip from the ex-wife of one of the men that they were plotting a suicide mission, the eight Egyptian immigrants were held for one week in October 2001 – one week. The men were questioned and released. Since then, the government has issued copious apologies to the men and has expunged their records.
What are liberals claiming law enforcement was supposed to do with information like that? We're sorry for any Arabs whose dearest dream was to go into crop dusting, but this really isn't a good time. (Perhaps we could have a five-day waiting period for Muslims who apply to U.S. flight schools for a background check.)
Albasti told PBS – that's right, PBS, the television network owned, operated and funded by the very same federal government Albasti now claims is oppressing him – that during his one-week confinement he was worried he would be hanged without anyone ever knowing what happened to him. For that remark alone, he should be deported. Is that what he thinks of America? But at least detained Arabs – and more to the point, their lawyers – have a monetary incentive to make absurd claims of persecution. What is the Democrats' excuse?
Based on the wails from our stellar crop of Democratic presidential candidates, you would think every Muslim in the country is cowering in fear of a pogrom-oriented attorney general. Meanwhile, the left's principal evidence of a civil-rights crisis in America consists of a one-week detention of eight Egyptian immigrants – one in flight school, no less – after the ex-wife of one of the men tipped off the FBI to a possible terrorist plot in the making.
Apparently, a lot of the false tips to law enforcement are coming from ex-wives. (Maybe Muslim men should have thought of that before introducing the burka.) Esshassah Fouad, a Moroccan student, was detained in Texas after his former wife accused him of being a terrorist. She is now serving a one-year prison sentence for making a false charge.
But some day, small children will be reading somber historical accounts about the dark night of fascism under John Ashcroft. (Thanks to Ashcroft, at least they'll be reading them in English, rather than Arabic.) If liberals applied half as much energy to some business endeavor as they do to creating the Big Lie, they would all be multimillionaires.
What are we to make of people who promote the idea that America is in the grip of a civil-liberties emergency based on 100 hazy stories of scowls and bumps and one-week detentions? Manifestly, there is no civil-liberties crisis in this country. Consequently, people who claim there is must have a different goal in mind. What else can you say of such people but that they are traitors?