That said, at this point I'd like to ask you what is the best way to handle this type of situation? Obviously if someone does something that makes them suspect of terrorist acts, they need to be dealt with before they can act. What is your solution?
This particular situation? Stop them, question them, possibly detain them for questioning (rather than arresting them), and if you still feel like they might have actual terrorist ties after that have them followed. If you detain them for a few hours, that should be enough time to put something together, maybe call the local FBI field office. After all, wouldn't you rather wait and see who they were delivering these cellphones
to rather than just bust the mules? If indeed these men had been part of a terrorist organization, they were obviously throwaways...driving up and down the interstate from Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart making bulk cellphone purchases is (obviously, as this case shows) not a "low-profile" activity.
The point is you don't arrest them and hold them on excessive bail unless you have an actual good-faith belief that a crime has been committed. You don't toss them into lock-up for a week until you can figure out something to charge them with.
In general? You work within the confines of the Consitution to disrupt terrorism and arrest terrorists. If that means that you don't stop every last attack, you mourn your dead and keep at it. You treat terrorism as you would any other type of crime; it isn't as though drunk drivers, murderers, and child molestors don't do just as much damage to society as terrorists...they just do it at a steady pace and less dramatically. Sure, terrorists are hard to track down and catch before they can do their damage...then again, it isn't as if child molesters tend to wear T-shirts.
Most of all, you try to assuage the public's fear, rather than doing everything you can to fuel it (which I truly believe the government has been doing in order to convince us to put more power in their hands). The boogeyman can only hurt you if you're scared of him. If you change your life, change our society, because of fear then you've done what the terrorists want. Otherwise, all they can do is kill you. Big deal.
If you're
that afraid of death, you should never go outside in the morning...or let those that you love out either. Because there are a dozen ways you could die every single day, many of them much more likely than a terrorist attack. I know I've been kinda harping on this point, but it's a biggie. I mean, for God's sake, a woman was killed when the ceiling of the Big Dig tunnel in Boston fell on the car she was riding in. People get killed in car accidents, many of which are caused by other motorists. Drunk motorists. Women are raped in dark alleys or in their own homes. Children get abducted and molested, or molested by family members. The world is a scary place if you stop to think about it, and when you put in in perspective all the Islamic terrorists in the world don't make it that much scarier.
Unless you let them. And Big Brother wants you to.*
Cal Thomas said:
These people use our Constitution to protect themselves so they can kill us. And this is decidedly not a game. It is life and death. We want to live and they want us dead. Any questions?
I chose this excerpt from your Cal Thomas quote because I think it illustrates the entire problem that leads to incidents like this one. Who are "these people?" Define "they." Because, believe it or not, it does not include all Middle-Eastern Muslims. Very few Middle-Eastern Muslims are actually involved in terrorism. And not all are in favor of it (though I do personally agree that a majority are). So is every random Arab one of "them?" Do all Arabs deserve the special treatment we've been reserving for them, to be singled out for abuse and suspicion for standing out from the crowd?
If there is one thing that will actually turn more and more Arabs against us, and to drive more to the ranks of the extremists, it's treating them like second-class citizens.
* EDIT: Even if you don't believe that anybody currently in government, at any level, is currently attempting a power grab so as to gain more control over the people of the US, the apparatus that we are creating right now is certainly one that I wouldn't want falling into the wrong hands...and I just don't trust the people of the US not to elect the guy attached to those hands.
