{"id":409491,"date":"2010-03-09T21:41:33","date_gmt":"2010-03-10T02:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=78839"},"modified":"2010-03-09T21:41:33","modified_gmt":"2010-03-10T02:41:33","slug":"pakistani-lawmakers-decry-u-s-airport-profiling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/409491","title":{"rendered":"Pakistani Lawmakers Decry U.S. Airport Profiling"},"content":{"rendered":"

In January, after the Department of Homeland Security announced that citizens of 14 (mostly Muslim) “terror-prone” countries would face extra security screening at U.S. airports, I wrote a piece<\/a> predicting a backlash. The U.S. was trying to convince Pakistan, for instance, that it was looking out for Pakistani interests — right as Pakistanis themselves were facing full-body screening. Kalsoom Lakhani, a Pakistani citizen who directs a Pakistan-based philanthropic organization, told me the new rules make her \u201cnervous to travel.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Sure enough, last week, the State Department brought a group of Pakistani legislators to the U.S. on a goodwill tour. It ended in what The New York Times calls a “public relations fiasco<\/a>” after — of course — the dignitaries were told they’d be pulled out of a security line at a New Orleans airport and frisked. Instead, they refused to board their plane. Now, back home, they’re heroes. And we’re villains. One of them told a radio host: “Going through a body scan makes you naked, and in making you naked, they make the whole country naked.”<\/p>\n

Imagine you’re a Pakistani official. You make a risky decision to start arresting your former proxies in the Afghan Taliban<\/a> after years of American pressure. And this<\/em> is how your legislators are treated by the Americans? How would you respond?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In January, after the Department of Homeland Security announced that citizens of 14 (mostly Muslim) “terror-prone” countries would face extra security screening at U.S. airports, I wrote a piece predicting a backlash. The U.S. was trying to convince Pakistan, for instance, that it was looking out for Pakistani interests — right as Pakistanis themselves were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}