Cumberland, MD, June 6 - An Amtrak train heading to Washington from Chicago was stopped and searched at the Cumberland yard in western Maryland after a member of the U.S. military reported that two men of Middle Eastern descent were acting suspiciously.A couple of things disturb me about this.
Authorities said one of the men appeared to have an unknown object concealed beneath his clothing.
One passenger told News4, "They told everybody to get off the train and FBI agents came and a sniper came, he had a gun, and the canine unit came. We were waiting outside for about two hours."
The two men were questioned and released Sunday night, Amtrak spokesman Dan Stessel said, with law enforcement officials deeming "them no longer of interest."
The train's 233 passengers, including the two men, were eventually sent to Union Station by bus. They arrived at around 10:30 Sunday night.
A bomb squad and dogs searched at least 12 of the cars and found no explosives.
"A member of the US military." What does that mean? Some GI? A military intelligence office secretly assigned to ride trains to watch for "suspicious behavior?" Is that it came from a member of the military supposed to give the suspicion added credence? Why?
"Men of Middle Eastern descent." Does it matter where they were from? Is that tidbit, again, supposed to add weight to the claim? Why? If these men were not "of Middle Eastern descent," would the same behavior have been regarded as suspicious? Would the same response have been given? If not, why not?
"Object concealed beneath his clothing." Well, did he? What was it?
"Everybody off the train." If the concern was two men "acting suspiciously," why not limit it to those men? Why involve everyone? How did we make the leap from "two suspicious guys" to searching at least most of the train, apparently for bombs?
"Sniper." What he hell was he doing there? What was he expected to accomplish? Are we supposed to imagine the "suspicious guys" had accomplices hiding in the trees right where the train was stopped? Or was this just to increase the sense of danger felt by the passengers?
It seems to me that what happened, bluntly, is that some soldier made a racist judgment about two other passengers which ended up generating a paranoid (and possibly racist) overreaction. Or maybe, since I'm in a conspiratorial mood right now, it wasn't an overreaction. I wrote just yesterday about my concern that we are becoming - being - inured to police intrusions, police authority, police orders, to passively accepting police disruption of our lives. Maybe this was regarded as much as an opportunity as an investigation.
And I don't want to hear any "better safe than sorry" poppycock. That is a slippery slope at the bottom of which lies a genuine police state with personal freedom and privacy de jure as well as de facto a thing of the past. Freedom carries risks but they are worth it. So instead of handing me that line, read Erich Fromm's classic Escape From Freedom.
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