This of course follows the trial and conviction of five men found guilty of planning massive explosions in Britain, all of whom had family links to Pakistan and all of whom went to Pakistan, ostensibly on family visits, but were trained by Al-Qaeda in the art of assembling ammonium nitrate bombs.
Naturally the cry has gone up over here of 'racism' and 'racial profiling' and, while nobody wishes to see any ethnic community made a scapegoat or singled out for suspicion, surely the United States has every right, given the recent evidence of hard line Jihadism among some British Muslims with Pakistan based connections, to protect its own citizens from harm from outsiders in any way it legally can.
It is a shame that such measures will appear to ostracise a section of Britain's Muslim community, most of whom offer no threat to anyone, but surely there comes a time when it is no longer appropriate to worry about sensitivity when there is a potential threat from some people who do have links to Pakistan and who are prepared to blow up tube trains, buses and shopping malls.
The alternative would seem to be that the Visa Waiver programme is withdrawn from British citizens altogether, and while that would seem to be 'fair and sporting' it would also be bloody ridiculous. The threat is clearly from a particular direction and it seems reasonable to me that the U.S. does what it can to minimise any potential risk from that area.
I am all for human rights, after all I am a committed member of Amnesty, but there are times and situations when I think the overall concern for human lives HAS to transcend any worrying about treading on peoples toes. This is not a cricket match where we all have to be jolly good chaps and be fair to everyone. It's a grim business of life and death and, until the British can give assurances to America that it has this extremist situation under control, I don't blame the United States one whit!
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