Absolute Authority
It seems the Minneapolis Six claims of being guilty of nothing more than flying while Muslim are somewhat, shall we say, disingenuous.
Which is the word used when prizing civility over accuracy.
While the details of the incendiary Imams behavior make for revelatory reading, this probably deserves more detailed explanation:
The Captain's absolute authority derives from long maritime custom. It is also embodied in the Federal Aviation Regulations:
While US Airways conducted an investigation -- a good thing, in that it revealed the true nature of the Imam's behavior -- there was never any possibility that the airline could ever apologize or be held in any way liable for the Captain's decision: it was his alone, and the company has absolutely no recourse in the matter. So long as 91.3 remains on the books, nothing CAIR, or the ACLU, will change that fact.
It isn't wise to annoy the Captain.
Which is the word used when prizing civility over accuracy.
While the details of the incendiary Imams behavior make for revelatory reading, this probably deserves more detailed explanation:
Here's what the flying public needs to know about airplanes and civil rights: Once your foot traverses the entranceway of a commercial airliner, you are no longer in a democracy in which everyone gets a vote and minority rights are affirmatively protected in furtherance of fuzzy, ever-shifting social policy. Ultimately, the responsibility for your personal safety and security rests on the shoulders of one person, the pilot in command. His primary job is to safely transport you and your belongings from one place to another. Period.
The Captain's absolute authority derives from long maritime custom. It is also embodied in the Federal Aviation Regulations:
FAR 91.3 The pilot in command of an aircraft is directly responsible for, and is the final authority as to, the operation of that aircraft.
While US Airways conducted an investigation -- a good thing, in that it revealed the true nature of the Imam's behavior -- there was never any possibility that the airline could ever apologize or be held in any way liable for the Captain's decision: it was his alone, and the company has absolutely no recourse in the matter. So long as 91.3 remains on the books, nothing CAIR, or the ACLU, will change that fact.
It isn't wise to annoy the Captain.
posted by Hey Skipper at 3:22 PM
18 Comments:
You can't run a ship of the line, or indeed an aircraft I suppose, as a democracy.
The flpside is that the Captain takes the stick if it all goes wrong, since even if it wasn't his fault, it's his fault.
I've followed this from the point of view of how it got reported.
If we can trust the Washington Times version that it was a publicity stunt -- and I am agnostic about that -- then the MSM that I serve got hoodwinked, showed itself disinclined to probe deeply, and leapt to the default conclusion -- anybody who complains about honkies is presumed correct.
This is as good an example as we have got of the alternate universe of news reporting.
If the Washington Times version is more authentic, it also raises big problems about Brit's version that beer-swilling, cricket-playing Muslims (or, less snarkily, those who piously protest their commitment to democracy) can routinely be taken at face value.
My view is that we've only started defining a whole mass of different people (with whom we've happily intermingled for some generations) by their religion since we became physically frightened of a lunatic fringe movement.
We have such a person on here regularly, though he doesn't say much about it.
Skipper, do I detect a note of residual anger that they abolished flogging?
No, just profound disappointment.
It is fiendishly difficult to rig a plank at 35,000 feet.
Swilling beer makes you a crap Muslim. It does not make you a bad person.
Most good human beings are crap at their religion - it's the essence of humanity to be a bit crap.
However, while hijacking planes obviously makes you a bad person, I don't think it makes you a good Muslim, whatever Skipper tells us about the Koran.
Well, according to the 'good Muslims,' hijacking planes does make you a 'good Muslim.'
Not for me to say they are wrong, is it?
By the way, you are there and I'm here, but I question whether before 9/11 Britons thought of immigrant Muslims as 'Pakistanis,' 'Bangladeshis,' etc.
In David Lodge's 'Nice Work' (the best of his novels up through 'Therapy,' I haven't read the latest ones), he never mentions Muslims, not Pakistanis, Bangladeshis etc. He calls these immigrants 'Asians.'
From an interview with the head of al-Jazeera:
Interviewer: But instead (suicide bombings of Jews) are a praiseworthy act?
al Jazeera: When the country is occupied and the people are being killed by the enemy, everyone must take action, even if he sacrifices himself in so doing.
Interviewer: Even if in so doing he kills iinnocent civilians?
al J: That is not a Palestinian problem, but a problem of the Israelis.
I'm not sure whether he is speaking as an Arab, or as a Muslim, or as both. That's part of the problem: I cannot tell the difference.
Pretty vile, though.
Don;t know how to do links, but I found the interview at Little Green Footballs Saturday. Today, it's also at Tim Blair.
Harry - you can do links using HTML tags, which are very easy.
In the blogger comments I think you can only use bold, italic and links anyway.
Some of us had figured it out earlier than that.
I'm a fan of la longue duree approach. There's no doubt what that tells us.
It seems to me that you would turn a battle against a small band of lunatics into a battle with 1.4 billion people worldwide just because you can't accept that few people are as logically consistent as you and Skipper.
Not up to me. Up to them.
Last night, I was reading Richard Overy's 'Russia's War,' where he quoted some good German as telling Himmler he could not exterminate 40 million Ukrainians.
Maybe not, but it turned out, just a few months later, that you could exterminate or drive away quite a few million Germans east of the Elbe. All of them, in fact.
And they had 'gotten along' for about 7 centuries.
Brit:
While some have accused me of mistaking Star Trek for a documentary about Spock's life, just because you can't accept that few people are as logically consistent as you and Skipper goes a bit astray.
So long as the vast majority of Muslims fail to resoundingly repudiate the nutters, that vast majority, lapsed Muslims all, provide topcover for the True Believers.
Unfortunately, given the presumed basis for Islam, that repudiation appears very difficult without undercutting the whole enterprise.
If there was no potential for the True Believers to get their hands on a nuke, I would be very hard pressed to give the tiniest darn.
So long as the vast majority of Muslims fail to resoundingly repudiate the nutters, that vast majority, lapsed Muslims all, provide topcover for the True Believers.
It seems a little harsh to blame the 1.4 billion because sheer numbers make it difficult to find the 50,000. Most are just trying to keep body and soul together.
It would be a lot harder for people like, eg Charles Johnson, to depict Islam as a death cult if there were not hundreds of thousands to millions of them out chanting 'Death to . . . '
Like Skipper, if they were just shouting 'Death to Sheikh Yerbooty' I wouldn't get too upset. When they chant 'Death to America' I take it personally.
Is that OK?
Are you suggesting I should ignore them?
It's not as if this is a theoretical discussion about how many angels fit on the head of a pin. I would feel the same if there were no theological component, if they merely hated me because of Coca-Cola.
David:
First, "blame" isn't quite the right word: the outcome is as inevitable as it is unintentional.
Secondly, if one presumes that 90% of the world's Muslims live in majority Muslim countries, then (given Pew poll numbers I don't have a link to off hand) something on the order of 400 million have a "literalist" view on the Q'uran.
As Harry asks, why should I not take that personally?
This may be a bit pedantic, but "turn a battle against a small band of lunatics into a battle with 1.4 billion people worldwide" isn't quite right, because one can't "battle" unarmed people - they can only be slaughtered, which is indeed what will happen if they anger us enough.
Note well that their unarmed status is ENTIRELY OF THEIR OWN CHOOSING. America and Britain have tried for literally centuries to show them a better way, to get their societies to take an interest in learning anything other than memorizing the Koran, but so far, no dice.
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