This guy seemed to have left every clue short of raise his hand and proclaim, “arrest me, I am a terrorist!”

2010-01-07-umar_farouk.jpg Can someone explain to me how he managed to purchase a one way ticket, pay for it in cash, board the plane with no luggage, have his own father report him as a radicalized threat to a CIA base in Nigeria, be denied a visa to the UK where he previously lived and worked, and on top of that be on an active US terror watch list for two years, yet still not be flagged by the system as a security threat?

And can someone explain to me how after those six glaring red flags were missed - not to mention the explosive material in his underwear - the debate today is not about why and how they were missed, but about whether he could have been flagged for being of a certain skin color, hair texture, place of birth, faith, or namesake?

The racial profiling argument is lazy and unimaginative; most of all it is irresponsible because it evades the real problem starring us in the face: a fatal breakdown in communication between our intelligence units. Ironically, this is a problem so troubling that an entire new department, the National Homeland Security Department, was created with the sole mission to address it.

Nestle. The United Nations. Rolex. Secure Banking. Toblerone. Yodeling. William Tell. Cowbells. Neutrality. Rousseau. Alpine Skiing. Heidi.

These are a few of the things — mostly pretty — that come to mind when you say “Switzerland.”

But now thanks to a recent popular vote on a controversial referendum, things like “intolerance,” “paranoia,” and “limitations on freedom of religion” have joined the merry list.

Amal Abusumayah, a 28-year-old American mother of four young girls, was going about her usual shopping when she was randomly treated to a dose of derogatory comments about her faith and ethnic heritage; the offending woman, later identified as 54-year-old Valerie Kenney, referenced Fort Hood. Amal tried to ignore the comments and proceeded to check out at the counter when she felt a sharp pull on her hijab — or headscarf.

According to the police, Professor Gates greeted the cops with a “belligerent” attitude, refusing to show them identification when asked, and refusing to step outside when asked. He was angry, rude and offensive. He eventually showed them his Harvard ID and eventually stepped outside where he was arrested for disorderly conduct and taken to the Cambridge police station. Professor Gates contends that while he was testy, he did show them two pieces of ID when asked: his Harvard ID and his driver’s license. He claims that the cops had it in for him, that he was a victim of racial profiling.

Spencer postures himself as an “Islamic Scholar.” But unlike most people we tend to call “scholars,” Spencer did not burden himself with the traditional scholarly route that puts an emphasis on objectivity and academic rigor. It never ceases to amaze me how the likes of Robert Spencer and Michael Savage who gleefully spout off anti-Muslim propaganda touting the freedom of speech card, suddenly feel threatened and victimized when Muslims use their own freedom of speech to respond. Spencer has a right to speak, Savage has a right to speak, and so does CAIR.

Mr. Sarkozy’s rationale for the ban is not centered on public security concerns, but on what the burka symbolizes to him. “The burka is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience,” he opined. Is there a real difference between France or Turkey forcing women to remove their veils, and Saudi Arabia or Iran forcing them to keep them on? Well there is one baffling difference: we hypocritically label the former as liberation, and the latter as oppression. That is a double standard that sacrifices the integrity of the principle for the benefit of arbitrary cultural determinism.

It seems that Netanyahu just wanted to utter the words peace and two-state as a decoy to grab headlines and avoid the undesirable appearance that Israel is belligerent in the face of US demands to move forward. His conditions include but are not limited to: no right of return for Palestinian refugees forcibly uprooted from their ancestral homes, no compromise over Jerusalem including Arab-majority East Jerusalem, no dismantling or freezing of Israeli illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank, no sovereign control for the new Palestinian state over its own borders and ports, no Palestinian right of defense (he uses the fancy buzz word, “demilitarized”), and no democratically elected party that Israel does not approve.

Say what you will about the recently exposed Bronx Terror Plot, but please, do not go about weaving fantasy scenarios of how Islam is somehow to blame for criminalizing the terror suspects who were already career criminals long before their conversions — and who displayed only a rudimentary understanding of Islam thereafter.

What have the Al Zawahiris of the world who claim to fight in defense of Islam actually done for Muslims or Islam? What have they done to educate the illiterate, feed the hungry, heal the diseased, or boost the quality of life anywhere in the Muslim world?

When leaders like Mark Kirk come up with ridiculous evasions about comprehensive immigration reform, it is not because they are stupid. And I am willing to believe it is not even because they are racist. It is because they have no real solutions.