Pawcatuck. Not Pawtucket.

There's been a lot written on "In Defense of Interment," which attempts to defend the Japanese internment during World War II as a perfectly rational self-defense measure and then, purportedly, apply the lessons of internment to the present day War on Terror. I say "purportedly" because Malkin -- for reasons that are never well explained -- doesn't seem to actually want to do this: "As I make plainly and thoroughly clear in both the lengthy introduction and conclusion, I am advocating narrowly-tailored and eminently reasonable profiling measures[,]" not internment.

Ahh. Well, this makes sense. You are defending the internment of the Japanese during WW2 as rational and appropriate, and arguing that the same lessons apply to the War on Terror; however, you wouldn't argue anything so gauche as actually applying those lessons. Heavens forbid! All you're doing is laying down some dots. You don't mean for us to connect them.

It is fair, I suppose, to also say that I find persuasive Eric Muller's takedown of her historical arguments. (See here and here and here (actually, just go to Is That Legal? and look around); Malkin responds in part here, and promises a further response in the future.) Do take a look.

With all this fresh in my mind, I read with interest Malkin's take on a recent article in the Seattle P-I criticizing her book. Here's how she responds, in part, to her critics:

Tom Ikeda and Scott Oki attack ["In Defense of Internment"] in a Seattle P-I op-ed. Like Greg Robinson, they say none of the information in my book is new, which is untrue. ... They [also] come out against racial profiling on the curious grounds that focusing on a "Syrian shopkeeper" could cause us to "overlook the deadly terrorist who happens to be Caucasian."

Well, no, that's not what Tom Ikeda and Scott Oki were criticizing. In fact, Ikeda and Oki say nothing about "racial profiling" in their op-ed piece. Here's what they do say:

Even those who share Malkin's casual attitude toward other people's civil liberties should agree that the roundup and imprisonment of 110,000 individuals -- from infants to elders -- was a costly overreaction to the degree of threat. National security officials, the wartime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover among them, have declared that sweeping up an entire population is bad intelligence practice. While we are busy uprooting, fingerprinting and deporting or imprisoning every Japanese farmer and Syrian shopkeeper, we could overlook the deadly terrorist who happens to be Caucasian.

The nerve of these folks: Actually criticizing "In Defense of Internment" for defending internment! How could they miss the point of Malkin's book, "In Defense of Internment," so thoroughly?

What a muddle. What a depressing, disingenuous muddle. Malkin apparently thinks that if she can make internment look respectable, her favored approach -- racial profiling -- will go down easier. She's aiming for Mars in hopes of landing on the moon. The problem is, she's likely to miss both.

The fact that many al Queda members (and related terrorist groups) are Arab, and that virtually all are Muslim, are not things that I want our security personnel to willfully forget. But let's try to set some sort of bar for intellectual honesty. (It doesn't have to be all that high.) Let's try to be honest with ourselves. Let's own up to the fact that, at some times, when we're nervous or scared or have a hunch, we will be judging people for the color of their skin, and not the content of their character. There is a reason it sounds like the wrong thing to do.

Indeed, let's try to keep that funny sick feeling in our chest when we realize that we've been casting sideways, evil glances at a gang of terrorists who turn out to be nothing more than muscians on their way to a gig. The evils we are toying with need not be defended to their fullest extent. Indeed, though it may be true that the ends sometimes justify the means, trust me: It is important for your soul that you remember an evil done for the greater good is still an evil.

* * * * * *

I'm off for a long weekend -- a whirlwind tour of the relations among the seven hills of Worcester, MA and rolling meadows of Pawcatuck, CT. Be good.

Comments

[Anarch]

It is important for your soul that you remember an evil done for the greater good is still an evil.

Amen, brother. Amen.

[Anarch]

One other thing: doesn't Malkin realize that, by advocating racial profiling, she's basically putting her ass on the line there? Unless you think the INS can differentiate by sight between a Bikolano, an Ilocano, a Zamboangan, and a pop-tart, which I rather doubt.*

* Ok, they could probably ID the pop-tart. "One of these things is not like the others.."

[norbizness]

You're on the right track, Anarch. Combine the indigenous terrorist groups in the Philippines (Abu Sayyaf) with the original Manchurian Candidate thesis (most vociferous opponent of an ideology can often be the perfect masquerade for an undercover proponent of the ideology), and things are not looking up for Ms. Malkin.

"Honey! Sweetie! Can't we just settle for a nice round number?"

"OK, if that will make you feel better."

"There are.. precisely.. FIFTY-SEVEN KNOWN ISLAMOFASCISTS in the Kerry-Edwards campaign!"

[Yama]

Let's not forget "Pawtuxet".

[Josh]

Ugh. I feel unclean after having read through Malkin's response to Muller.

[JohnThullen]

I have much to say about this, but I'm working on tomorrow's hangover and I am currently inarticulate.

But here's a muddled summary of the highlights: Liberal, big time, but not politically correct; former Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines; scared of flying but pissed off if anyone gets between me and landing safely; happy to fight;
I find Malkin to be a 15-year-old, teenaged, emotional demagogue; she reminds me, dangerously, of pro-Marcos hacks in the Filipino press in the 1970s; I was mugged once and pickpocketed in the Philippines and resist the temptation, you know, being liberal, of profiling her racially (against Thomas Sowell's advice) but if she were seated near me and got up often to take a leak on my flight, I'd be checking it out and not likely to consult with the stewardess before I took personal action (this just sounds awful, doesn't it?), but I have so little confidence in the "idea" of flying and consider it a manifestation of collective faith that, you know, a vaccuum is created above the wings, giving the plane lift or thrust and here we go magically to another location, well go ahead and believe it if you must, but I'm ordering another drink and if somebody gets up while I'm nodding off to break into the cockpit and break the spell for whatever reason then they will need to deal with wolverine me as I kick their butts in close quarters.

Like I said: inarticulate.

But Malkin and her ilk sicken me. Malkin has ilk, you know, just like she accuses we liberals, and everybody else who's different from her, (what is she?) of having.

Watch out for ilk! Profile them.

[Phil]

If I were an Islamic terrorist, and I were inclined to want to spite the likes of Malkin, I'd be every place I can recruiting a thousand John Walker Lindhs. Just because.

[lightning]

Yeah, we don't have to worry about Tim McVeigh, Terry Nichols, Richard Reid, John Walker Lindh, Jose Padilla, William J. Krar, or Orcinus' whole zoo of crazies.

A couple of years ago here in the DC area, the cops spent a lot of time looking for a white truck, while a certain burgandy Caprice just drove through the roadblocks ...