Michelle Malkin has the scoop on the eleven missing Egyptian men who entered the U.S. as “students,” got off the airplane, and have not been seen since.  Of course, eleven potential terrorists are a problem, but since we probably have far more than that in Dearborn, Michigan alone, more disconcerting to me is the cavalier and dismissive treatment of this issue by Michael Chertoff.  To be specific:

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was less than pleased when the Federal Bureau of Investigation put out a BOLO (be-on-the-lookout) for 11 Egyptian students who failed to show up for class.

“The secretary was not happy that we went so far for a just a bunch of kids who cut class,� said one senior Homeland Security official. “It’s a visa violation not a national security matter. “ Foreign students now undergo background checks before being granted visas, the official said. The FBI said today that it was continuing to search for the missing students along with agents from Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau. “This remains an active investigation,� said FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko.

The Egyptian men were among a group of 17 students who arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York from Cairo on July 29 with valid visas, according to U.S. authorities and university officials. The other six arrived at the Montana State’s campus in Bozeman for a month-long program on English language instruction and U.S. history and culture, university spokeswoman Cathy Conover said.

A simple childlike questioning attitude would retort, “how do you know this isn’t a security concern?”

On a little more scholarly level, the attitude is stolid and dense.  It is an example of begging the question, and it is a material falacy.  The proposition to be proved is implicitly assumed.  In this case, it is that these eleven “students” are in fact who they say they are and that they pose no security concern.

Um … Michael … this was what you were hired to find out.  This is it.  Just this sort of thing.  And things just like this every day.  It makes no difference who these “students” turn out to be, friend or foe.  The DHS must undergo a paradigm shift in its philosophy in order effectively to protect the U.S.

Chertoff has shown himself to be a trivial welterweight with this attitude, as if failing to secure the border isn’t enough to convict him of being trivial.  He should step aside and let a more serious person try to manage our security.