The Florida Family Association logo (Photo: floridafamily.org)

Home-improvement chain Lowe’s is facing backlash following its decision to pull ads from TLC’s All-American Muslim, a reality-TV show centering on the lives of Muslims living in a Detroit suburb. Though reps for Lowe’s have said the company pulled the ads due to “strong political and societal views” from many individuals, a conservative Florida group is at the center of the controversy.

Last month, the Florida Family Association sent a series of emails to supporters asking them to petition several of the companies advertising during All-American Muslim. According to the Association’s website, companies including Sweet ‘N Low and The Home Depot have also pulled their ads from the show. The Association has said that Lowe’s is the 66th company to remove its advertising from the show, but it is the only one to release a statement about its decision. (Ed note: Since this article’s publication, Florida Family Association has disabled all pages of its website, leaving a lone statement on its homepage about having faced “mean spirited” attacks from critics; though the nature of such attacks is not specified. “Because of our real concern for the terrorism that is a way of life for some folks, we ourselves have become victims,” the statement reads.)

Though the show aims simply to show the lives of American Muslims living in a post-9/11 world, the Family Association has claimed it profiles “only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.”

“Learning Channel’s new show All-American Muslim is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law,” reads a post on the Association site.

This isn’t the first time the group has concerned itself with television shows. The group also launched petitions against the advertisers of VH1′s Ru Paul’s Drag Race, NBC’s The Playboy Club (which was canceled after only three episodes) and the Teen Nick show DeGrassi.

California Sen. Ted Lieu has said the ad pulls were evidence of “naked religious bigotry” and are prime examples of the discrimination often faced by Muslims in America.

In addition to penning a  letter to Lowe’s CEO Robert Niblock, in which he expressed his distaste for the company’s recent actions, Lieu told the Associated Press he might consider legislative action if Lowe’s doesn’t apologize to Muslims and reinstate its ads.

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., has also spoken out against Lowe’s, which he says is choosing to disregard the First Amendment. ”Our nation’s history is full of examples demonstrating how we have repeatedly torn down false divisions hate groups choose to create,” Ellison said in a statement. “But the struggle against bigotry and hatred must continue so we never give in to intolerance like Lowe’s Corporation has done.”

Florida Family Association Executive Director David Caton (Photo: floridafamily.org)

According to a 2010 Florida Family Association financial statement (PDF), the organization received around $172,000 in gifts and contributions last year. According to the mission statement posted on its website, the group was formed in order to “educate people on what they can do to defend, protect and promote traditional, biblical values.”

Haris Tarin, the director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s D.C. office, said he anticipated that the show would be controversial.

“From the beginning, our organization was anticipating that there would be a few campaigns launched to use the show to push the discourse to an even more extreme position against Islam,” Tarin said. “There’s an entire industry that doesn’t want to see any portrayal of Muslims without terrorism or without an extreme narrative of Islam being pointed out.”

Tarin said his organization has launched its own campaign, to counter the attacks by the Florida Family Association. In addition to meeting with the Council’s interfaith and civic partners, the group plans to put pressure on companies like Lowe’s to ensure that it apologizes and reinstates the ads.

“We’ve been getting Americans of all backgrounds to call Lowe’s since last week and we are initiating meetings with Lowe’s and some of the other advertisers to have a conversation about this, because it sets a very disconcerting precedent,” Tarin said. “There are a large number of Muslim-Americans who shop there, as well as many Muslim employees, and this decision [to pull the ads] could prove very problematic for our democracy.”

(Photo: Flickr Creative Commons/www.BackgroundNow.com)

Shoshana Shebshi, daughter of a Saudi father and a Jewish mother, is a housewife from Ohio and an American citizen. By sheer coincidence she was seated on the plane next to two men of Indian descent from Michigan, none of whom knew each other or even, she says, spoke to each other on the plane until after it landed.

By that point, Shebshi says, they were all wondering what was going on as the plane was taken far from the gate and was surrounded by law enforcement personnel. They were shocked when several heavily armed police officers boarded the plane, handcuffed them and took them to the airport police station for several hours of questioning — including a strip search.

The police had been called by airline personnel, apparently after passengers on the plane reported seeing them engaged in “suspicious” behavior. Shebshi says there was nothing that could arouse genuine suspicion:

The male agent proceeded to ask me a series of questions about where I had been, where I was going, about my family, if I had noticed any suspicious behavior on the plane. The other agent took notes while I talked. They asked if I knew the two men sitting next to me, and if I noticed them getting up during the flight or doing anything I would consider suspicious.

I told them no, and couldn’t remember how many times the men had gotten up, though I was sure they had both gone to the bathroom in succession at some point during the flight.

They had done some background check on me already because they knew I had been to Venezuela in 2001. They asked about my brother and sister and asked about my foreign travel. They asked what I did during the flight. I told them I didn’t get up at all, read, slept and played on my phone (in airplane mode, don’t worry). They asked about my education and wanted my address, Social Security, phone number, Facebook, Twitter, pretty much my whole life story.

Again, I asked what was going on, and the man said judging from their line of questioning that I could probably guess, but that someone on the plane had reported that the three of us in row 12 were conducting suspicious activity. What is the likelihood that two Indian men who didn’t know each other and a dark-skinned woman of Arab/Jewish heritage would be on the same flight from Denver to Detroit? Was that suspicion enough? Even considering that we didn’t say a word to each other until it became clear there were cops following our plane? Perhaps it was two Indian man going to the bathroom in succession?

All three were later released without charges and, according to Shebshi, with apologies from the officers. She concludes her long recall of the incident:

In the aftermath of my events on Sept. 11, 2011, I feel violated, humiliated and sure that I was taken from the plane simply because of my appearance. Though I never left my seat, spoke to anyone on the flight or tinkered with any “suspicious” device, I was forced into a situation where I was stripped of my freedom and liberty that so many of my fellow Americans purport are the foundations of this country and should be protected at any cost.

I believe in national security, but I also believe in peace and justice. I believe in tolerance, acceptance and trying–as hard as it sometimes may be–not to judge a person by the color of their skin or the way they dress. I admit to have fallen to the traps of convention and have made judgments about people that are unfounded. We live in a complicated world that, to me, seems to have reached a breaking point. The real test will be if we decide to break free from our fears and hatred and truly try to be good people who practice compassion–even toward those who hate.

I feel fortunate to have friends and family members who are sick over what happened to me. I share their disgust. But there was someone on that plane who felt threatened enough to alert the authorities. This country has operated for the last 10 years through fear. We’ve been a country at war and going bankrupt for much of this time. What is the next step?

The speakers, national security journalist Peter Bergen, Editor in Chief of Foreign Policy magazine Susan Glasser, and president of NAF Steve Coll, rarely disagreed on each other’s takeaways, often adding personal anecdotes of interviews with prominent foreign leaders whose input fell on deaf ears.

Questionable Military Tactics

Glasser told the audience she spoke to General Boris Gromov, the commander of Soviet forces in Afghanistan at the time of the 1989 pullout, who told her days after the Twin Towers fell, an American foot presence in Afghanistan would be a disaster.

For Coll, whose book on the subject, Ghost Wars, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005, the wrong lessons were learned from previous Soviet and British campaigns in the country and elsewhere.

While admitting the “thought experiment” in Afghanistan was skewed by the Iraq war, Coll explained the diagnosis of mistakes NATO and the U.S. made were not those of the USSR. “The latter had a much more illegitimate cause,” he said. “The U.S. revolt (by the Afghans) took much longer,” he added, and required “many more mistakes and more years to unfold.”

The speakers explained the U.S. mission in Afghanistan in the early days was designed to minimize the visibility of ground forces. Glasser remarked he didn’t see an American soldier until 2002, some three months after Operation Enduring Freedom commenced. Bergen, CNN’s national security analyst and director of NAF’s National Security Studies Program, shared an exchange he had with a senior commander. Bergen asked why the 10th Mountain Division — a light-infantry unit with specialized training to fight in harsh terrain — wasn’t called in to join the assault on Tora Bora, a decision Glasser wrote in an essay was one of the worst decisions of the decade. Bergen says the commander “feared, on basis of advice, if he put men there, it would provoke a Pashtun uprising,” a reality the three panelists say the U.S. wasn’t prepared to face.

The footprint of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan was so light, the panel maintained, that more journalists were killed than soldiers in the opening months of the conflict.

Role of Pakistan

The panelists agreed the Bush administration erred in outsourcing the security and political apparatus to then-President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, a move done to focus personnel and resources on the imminent war in Iraq. Coll points the finger at the lack of South Asian experts on the Bush staff, arguing Bush’s advisors were too credulous of Pakistan, and took for granted the Asian country’s interest’s aligned with America’s. Coll, mirroring Glasser’s analysis, said, “It didn’t require deep investigation to see the duality in how Pakistan managed its relationship with the U.S.”

What frustrated the panelists most about the U.S. pullback in the country was the willingness of Taliban officials to integrate themselves in the new pro-U.S. Karzai government, and the missed opportunity of securing the trust and stability of regional leaders.

Coll recounted a meeting replayed to him of Taliban regional leaders gathering a few weeks before Karzai formally took over. After the leaders discussed surrender policy and securing their role in the new government, one member asked if they would still receive car allowances. To Coll, that anecdote plays to the ease with which rival factions in the war-torn country shift allegiances.

But what should have been an easy and nation-building transition was sundered by what Coll says was a U.S. policy of giving rein to “proxy warlords.” He says Bush Afghan policy made the U.S. “a bunch of warlords,” selling local and regional Taliban leaders to bounty under the assumption all Taliban members were in toe with the group’s senior members.

Glasser said Pakistan continued to play both sides, something obvious to journalists and senior policy makers. She brought up an observation that hundreds of Pakistani families living outside of Islamabad were sending their sons off to war in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion, their return facilitated by the Pakistani government.

Hitting upon a theme used throughout the 90-minute discussion, Coll said, the “problem, even today, is that we overlearned the lesson. Being shocked by our inability to see what was obvious, we’re becoming firm in the other direction.”

To Bergen, the Bush administration’s reliance on Musharraf smacked of wishful thinking. He explains the U.S. approval rating in Pakistan is 12 percent, down from the higher teens earlier in the decade. Bergen mocked the notion held by Bush officials that Pakistan would understand its real strategic interests and curry favor with the U.S. Alluding to the country’s conflicts with India, he said, “If we lost 3.5 wars with Canada over 60 years, we’ll have a different focus.”

How important was 9/11, anyway?

Coll and Glasser proposed 9/11 was a false ground-zero to the international developments most important to U.S. strategic interests. Coll, after describing an essay that appeared in the Financial Times, portrayed the events of September 11th as a “side-bar” to the economic expansion of China and Brazil, and the economic crises of the last three years.

Glasser referred to a spread in Foreign Policy that identified events following 9/11 that were more impactful domestically and abroad than the terrorist attacks. Social networking appeared on the list, as did the fastest transition from poverty to the middle class in the last ten years the world has ever experienced, she said.

Coll and Glasser considered whether the military expeditions in Asia were a “late-imperial overstretch,” rather than a response to terrorism. In terms of path dependencies, the two proffered whether the military build-up in Afghanistan occurred independent of 9/11 and proposed that 50 years from now, history books could view the last decade that way.

Why the wars happened

Coll explained 9/11 provoked extension “of what was building up anyway.” He asked whether the war in Iraq  was instigated by 9/11, or was it inevitable the U.S. and Tony Blair of Great Britain would over-interpret their international role given Saddam Hussein’s UN violations.

For the panelists, that over-interpretation was premised on how speedy and cost-effective previous U.S. and British military engagements were following the collapse of the USSR. The budgets that dramatically undershot the massive debts the U.S. would incur were a manifestation of the luck the two powers had. Coll pointed to the quick and successful intervention in Bosnia, the bombing of Serbia, the first Gulf War and UK engagement in Sierra Leone as motivation for entering Iraq regardless of its 9/11 culpability. “That’s the overstretch, that basically success of the Gulf War (and other victorious conflicts) was so rapidly over-learned,” Coll said.

Bergen was uneasy putting so much stock into the US-led conflicts. He said the war in Afghanistan costs 1 percent of U.S. GDP, compared to the 9 percent Vietnam commanded. And while that conflict spelled significant political unrest domestically, the current military expedition is on the back of the minds of most Americans. He summarized the decade since 9/11 as a time of relative peace and limited economic wealth.

Sen. Mark Udall

“Thousands of American men and women have fought and died to defeat the terrorists led by Osama bin Laden who attacked our nation on September 11, 2001. The death of bin Laden is a major milestone in U.S. efforts to eradicate terrorism and keep our homeland safe.

“I salute our brave service members, our intelligence community, and our commander in chief, on this important occasion. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Intelligence Committee, I will continue to ensure that our government does all it can to keep Coloradans and every American safe from enemies who wish to do us harm.”

Survivors of the attack and first responders have been diagnosed with increased rates of leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, as well as esophageal, prostate and thyroid cancer, according to sources that have seen the federally funded longitudinal study that the New York Fire Department has undertaken for the last seven years. In addition, the study will reportedly show World Trade Center workers of all ages have increased rates of the blood cancer multiple myeloma, with is usually found only among the elderly. The study is set to be released to the general public soon.

Bolstering the findings of the study is the fact that more than 600 of the 10,000 people involved in a lawsuit against the city of New York seeking compensation for damages resulting from 9/11 have been diagnosed with cancer. Since June 2010, 345 Ground Zero workers have died of cancer.

It’s as yet unclear exactly why Ground Zero exposure has caused such heightened levels of cancer, though previous reports on health problems among Ground Zero workers have cited exposure to smoke and alkaline dust as triggers for a wide variety of complaints.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, an alternative and potentially offensive hypothesis has crept up among the margins of the Internet.

Conspiracy theorists who maintain that the 9/11 attacks were planned and executed by the U.S. government to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East have seized upon the news as evidence that the destruction at the World Trade Center was, in fact, from a nuclear detonation. This theory ignores the fact that there are plenty of carcinogens that can result from widespread destruction, even without the aid of nuclear weapons, as evidenced by the little-reported massive surge in cancer rates in Fallujah, Iraq, following the U.S. invasion of the city.

The news that 9/11 responders are suffering from cancer at inordinate rates may create some political fallout for Senate and House Republicans, who blocked passage last year of a bill that would have provided a total of $7.4 billion to compensate 9/11 victims and their families and to monitor and treat health problems stemming from Ground Zero. Democratic advocates for the measure, like Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), spoke out strongly at the time against the death of the bill.

The initiative is a move to ask Americans to help local law enforcement by keeping their eyes peeled for “suspicious activity,” DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and NBA Commissioner David Stern told press at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. The emphasis toward civilian “suspicious activity reporting” has surged in recent years, but advertising campaigns and high-profile partnerships have really begun to take off.

In December, DHS joined forces with Wal-Mart, launching the ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ campaign initially in 230 Wal-Mart stores, with a target of 588 sites in 27 states. A short video plays at select checkout stations, telling shoppers to call local police if they see something suspicious. (The term “suspicious,” by the way, is rarely elaborated on or defined by DHS in campaign messages.)

Moving on to sports, DHS partnered with the NFL with its campaign at the Super Bowl in Dallas early this month. And now the NBA.

“We hope that this partnership will emphasize basically that security is a shared responsibility,” said NBA Commissioner David Stern at yesterday’s press event. “We think that sports is a terrific way to send messages, and to get people who go to events to focus on this very important message.”

Or maybe Napolitano is just a big sports fan.

“Our partnership with the NBA to bring the ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ campaign to professional basketball events throughout the nation is a vital part of our efforts to ensure the safety of players, employees and fans,” she told the press.

Inquiries have begun over how effective these campaigns are at protecting the country from terrorism. With sports fans and budget-conscious shoppers reporting “suspicious” activities every 10 minutes, does that help the security agencies or overwhelm the system?

David Rittgers, a legal policy analyst for the Cato Institute, said he thinks the national security agencies are overwhelmed with information.

“While there is value in getting a person on the street to be aware and report suspicious activities, you can also create too many false positives,” Rittgers said.

Rittgers said the Federal Bureau of Investigations receives about 700 messages a day, and the National Counterterrorism Center receives about 10,000 pieces of information daily. Clogging the system with even more reports of indiscriminate “suspicious activities” won’t necessarily bring these agencies closer to the information they need to prevent terrorist plots.

“People talk about connecting dots,” he said. “But it’s knowing which dots to connect that has value. …. The commitment to simply collect all the dots might not be as useful as a lot of people would propose.”

For example: “It’s not illegal to purchase a ski mask, it’s not illegal to purchase a gun, it’s not illegal to sit outside a bank. But it’s when you put those all together.”

The measure of success is still to be seen, but meanwhile the money is flowing.

“If You See Something, Say Something” are now being posted all over the country, according the DHS: on 9,000 federal buildings nationwide, at the Mall Of America, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Amtrak, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and the general aviation industry.

DHS allocated $2.9 million for the campaign in 2009, but an official told CNSNews.com that the agency has only spent $500,000 on the campaign to date, saying it is focusing its efforts on partnerships –- outsourcing security, if you will. And while Napolitano told the network the campaign has resulted in the launch of several investigations, she said it’s still difficult to measure whether it will effectively deter would-be terrorists.

There was some fear that Republicans would introduce an amendment barring illegal immigrants who worked at Ground Zero from aid under the $7.4 billion proposal. If this happened, moderate Democrats reportedly hoped House leadership would remove the bill from the floor to prevent them from a contentious vote close to the election.

The fear turned out to be baseless: No such an amendment was proposed, and those who opposed the bill argued about finances, not illegal workers. “This legislation as written creates a huge $8.4 billion slush fund…open to abuse, fraud and waste,” Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said during the debate Wednesday.

The bill passed 268 to 160, with 17 Republicans voting for the measure and 3 Democrats voting against it.

The previous fight over the bill was over whether amendments should be offered, leading Republicans to vote down efforts to move forward with the bill. This time, some seem more likely to support it, but they may try to include an amendment to ban benefits from going to illegal immigrants who worked at Ground Zero.

The Wall Street Journal does not exactly promise Republican action — “it’s not clear that they will do so tomorrow,” they write — but the possibility has some Democrats worried anyway. Unnamed moderate Democrats facing tough elections in November reportedly have told Democratic leaders they want to avoid voting on such an amendment.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office declined to comment to the Journal on whether she would pull the bill off the floor if an amendment blocking illegal immigrants is offered.

But Landrieu made an unusual argument against the moratorium at today’s hearing. She said the moratorium is “radical and unprecedented” because other industries have not been shut down as a result of major disasters. Landrieu cited the Massey Energy mining disaster, a Georgia sugar refinery explosion in 2008, and airline crashes, noting that there was no moratorium on any of those industries following the disasters. The airline industry was up and running four days after 9/11, she said.

It’s a message the agency has been pushing for years, and with only relative success. Even 9/11 did not scare America into compliance: A 2007 study by the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, for instance, showed that 80 percent of Americans were “concerned” about another terror attack, but only one-third were prepared for a major disaster. And last year, a FEMA survey found that while the number of individuals who had set aside disaster supplies at home had crept up from 50 percent in 2003 to 57 percent in 2009, the agency was still far from its goal of having 80 percent of households prepared with a communications plan, disaster supplies and practice at evacuating or weathering a disaster at home.

Part of the difficulty is the unpredictable and varied nature of disasters. Topping the news right now is a diminishing Hurricane Earl, which the East Coast has been bracing for all week and now looks like it’ll have a minimal impact. But across the world, a major New Zealand city is reeling from a 7.4 magnitude earthquake. Unlike hurricanes, earthquakes for the most part occur at random (although the Himalayas apparently have a winter earthquake season). In the United States, Californians deal with earthquakes most frequently, but Seattle is also at risk and New York City has had a couple in its day.

In a terrorist attack, an hurricane or an earthquake, it surely won’t hurt to have at hand a gallon of water per person, per day, three days worth of food, a flashlight, dust masks, a first aid kit and other items FEMA recommends. But preparedness is more complicated than that. It means knowing that in an earthquake, for instance, it’s smarter to stay inside a building than to try to get out, the agency says.

In a earthquake-prone area, it might be easier to see the use of remembering that dictate than of keeping uneaten cans of beans under the sink for an emergency that never seems to come. But FEMA can’t tailor its national preparedness messages that closely. It can only prompt people to think about these problems in a general way and hope they’ll seek out more information their own.