TIME Magazine says beautifully and succinctly why the racist undertones of the "War on Terror" are undermining itself and the safety of Americans:

Jamal Harwood prays five times a day. He doesn't drink, smoke or eat pork. He's active in his local Muslim community, and he's very serious about the need for an Islamic state. But if you passed him on the street, you would have no idea. Not just because Harwood, a financial consultant in London, wears a suit instead of traditional Muslim dress. Or because he keeps his beard cropped fashionably close.

But because he's white.

A year later, he converted and soon joined Hizb ut-Tahrir, a political party known for its radical views that is banned in many Muslim countries. Harwood, 45, is now a spokesman for the group; he says it is opposed to terrorism. Although his life choices may make him an object of scrutiny by his government--Hizb ut-Tahrir has been on Britain's watch list since the July 2005 terrorist attacks in London--he has no regrets.

Whether or not Hizb ut-Tahrir is actually a terrorist organization (I personally find its motives questionable to say the least) is not at issue.

The government has labeled group A as terrorist and goes out to look for "Arabs" -- but a white guy is the spokesperson for group A. And the current terrorism related racial profiling is rife with other flub-ups.

Racial profiling simply does not work. However, no one has told this to Rep. Peter King -- the Republican from New York -- he already said:

"The fact is the overwhelming odds are that it is going to be someone of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent and of the Muslim faith. And I think a screener should be allowed to factor that in as one of many factors. Like if we were told that the Ku Klux Klan was going to attack Harlem or Bedford Stuyvesant, I think we'd spend more time looking more closely at whites than we would at African-Americans," King told 'FOX News Sunday.'

This would only be a valid parallel if, say, black Klan members were burning crosses. We see: Azzam the American was born Adam Ghadan, and John Walker Lindh's light brown hair and dirt-encrusted pale white skin were all over our screens. The shoebomber Richard Reid, hell, even Zacarias Moussaoui -- spit in the face of all the arrested Arabs on "suspicion of terror".

Actually, Representative King didn't stop there. As Newsday reported:

eclaring that airport screeners shouldn't be hampered by "political correctness," House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King has endorsed requiring people of "Middle Eastern and South Asian" descent to undergo additional security checks because of their ethnicity and religion....

King, who has said that all Muslims aren't terrorists but that all recent terrorists are Muslim, favors an ethnic and religious profiling scheme that would include foreign and American-born travelers. "I would give the investigators and screeners a lot of discretion as to where it ends," he said.

Last week, the British Department of Transport got caught up in a scandal regarding using racial profiling. One of the masterminds of the July 7th London bombings was black, and one of the airline plot terrorists was white.

Any terrorist with half a mind -- much less a mastermind -- would learn, just by reading the above, the hard lesson that millions of black men in America already know.

If the cops show up, give everything to the white guy.

If the racial profiling increases, it's almost a corollary -- obviously the use of "non-Middle Eastern or South Asian" terrorists will increase.

I think some of the Department of Homeland Security must be more interested in keeping America racist than safe. As even FOX News shows, we have other ways -- behavioral screening, etc. -- which are already in place at a number of airports which would not require screeners to resort to ethnic profiling.

But why do that? Who cares about offending a bunch of "ragheads", right?