Once again, Obama “goes to China”
Posted by mcm
at January 11, 2010

Obama has now authorized profiling–the latest of his Nixon-goes-to-China moves.

Some of my younger readers may not get that reference: With his stellar anti-communist credentials, Nixon was free to reach out to “Red China” without anyone accusing him of being “soft on Communism” (as he’d done to so many others). That is, he had the latitude to make a “big move” that no Democrat could ever even have considered, much less tried.

Thus Bill Clinton “went to China” when he “ended welfare as we know it,” since, if a Republican had tried to do it, everybody would have jumped all over him (or her).

Clinton arguably “went to China” in a lot of other ways as well; but in his whole eight years he didn’t do it half as much–a tenth as much–as Barack Obama has already done it in his single year in office.

So let’s just note that this decision to start profiling openly is but the latest of a long, long list of rightist moves that Bush was loudly criticized for doing–or that he would have been, if he had dared attempt them. As with his official policy of indefinite detention, and his baldly pro-war speech in Oslo, so now with profiling, Obama’s “gone to China” one more time–and, once again, most liberal Democrats will probably defend him, or say nothing.

MCM

La Presse, Canada
Profiling Authorized by Obama
By Rima Elkouri
Translated By Josh Levin

Yesterday, profiling of airport travelers entering the United States became an official measure. Pat-downs and obligatory searches of carry-on bags are now in place for nationals of fourteen countries, as well as passengers who have traveled through those states.

It is ironic, to say the least, to see profiling given the rubberstamp under the Obama administration: that same Obama, black but somehow not quite black, with an Arabic middle name so suspicious to his adversaries, who dreams of a post-racial America. He is the same Obama who proclaimed loud and clear that the United States does not have to choose between security and its ideals. Now, in the name of security, those post-racial ideals are being hung out to dry.

So if you should happen to find yourself a national of one of the fourteen countries on the American blacklist (Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen), or if you have passed through one of these countries, you are officially a suspect. You will be obligatorily subjected to a pat-down and a search at the airport.