Arab Internment Camps

Niraj Warikoo writing for the Detroit Free Press:

A member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission said in Detroit on Friday he could foresee a scenario in which the public would demand internment camps for ArabAmericans if Arab terrorists strike again in this country.

If there’s a future terrorist attack in America “and they come from the same ethnic group that attacked the World Trade Center, you can forget about civil rights,” commission member Peter Kirsanow said.

Kirsanow, who was appointed to the commission last year by President George W. Bush, said after the session that he personally doesn’t support such camps and the government would never envision them. He said he was merely saying public opinion would so strongly favor the idea that it would be difficult to prevent. There would be a “groundswell of opinion” for the detainment, he said.

Since when does the government do everything that a “groundswell of opinion” dictate that it do? Umm, never. Kirsanow can’t be so naive as to think that the Bush Administration would intern Arab citizens simply because the public demanded, all the while expressing it’s disapproval of such an option. You’d have to be pretty damn stupid to buy that argument. Considering the complete ridiculousness of such an argument (and based on some of his other comments), I have to question whether he really is opposed to internment camps. More likely, he was checking the “temperature” for public tolerance of such a scheme. Let me help him out. Peter, you can put me in “Opposed” column.