Our Weaknesses Used Against Us
As it turns out, the three men stopped Friday were medical students, not terrorists. We can breathe again, and those of us in Florida can go back to manufactur--er, counting votes.
But the story that started last Friday continues. The three men who were the subject of the closure of Alligator Alley continue to tweak their message. Originally, it was a joke, aimed at tweaking a woman who was looking at them. Then they didn't saying anything and the family and the men charged that the woman who reported them was racist, as are the police and the media and the rest of us. Now they didn't say anything, but they don't want to say anything against anyone.
The charges that the woman in Georgia were racist, however, are not likely to subside. And there are people who wish us harm who will nurture continued attacks against her for a very simple reason...there are Arab-Muslim people in this country planning terror attacks. And if we could be bullied into silence, or at least into thinking twice before reporting incidents in which we see or hear things, then it makes the job of planning and executing attacks much easier.
And the problem is, there are people in this country, some of them very powerful, who are all too eager to use that charge of racism to extend their power and silence their critics. It doesn't matter what actually happened and whether what this woman did was the right thing.
