Profiling terrorists / Behavior, not religion or ethnicity, should be the focus

Luckily, alleged terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed in his attempt to set off a bomb aboard Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day. But the 23-year-old Nigerian with reputed ties to al-Qaeda did succeed at doing one thing. He restarted the debate in this country over whether U.S. efforts to improve airline security should include racial, ethnic or religious profiling of passengers.

Even when we come this close to tragedy, the answer is clear: No. It shouldn’t.

It’s wrong to single out whole groups of people based on some arbitrary characteristic. For instance, just because a majority of terror suspects arrested or killed by U.S. officials since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were Muslim males, it does not logically follow that all or most Muslim males are terrorists.

But aside from the moral objections, as we’ve seen, profiling by characteristic isn’t very efficient.