American Parsimony Toward Syrian Refugees is a Disgrace. Let them in.
September 14, 2015

 
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Just over four Million Syrian refugees have fled their homeland looking to escape the ravages of a war that WE are largely to blame for yet accept almost no responsibility for. President Obama has announced that the United States will allow in a paltry 10,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S…. NEXT YEAR… or ONE QUARTER OF ONE PERCENT. Meanwhile, Germany, a country 1/27th the size of the U.S., has agreed to accept 800,000 Syrian refugees (or 20%, fully ONE FIFTH). Makes you proud to be an American, don’t it?

America is indeed largely to blame for this crisis. The Syrian government is going after ISIS, which exists only because of Bush’s invasion of Iraq. “ISIS” used to be called “AQAP” or “alQaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” back when Bush was president, whose core leadership consisted of former Iraqi Military leaders. As Iraq became a hot mess, ISIS was invited by the Syrian rebels fighting & fleeing the Assad regime. There are in fact more ISIS fighters in Syria than there are in Iraq, protected by the fact that the U.S. was not in Syria. And this escalation has led to the refugee crisis we see today.

Republicans… whom I’ve repeatedly described as “terrified children” that live in constant blinding fear of everything (minorities, terrorists, “Homo’s”, the government, you name it) and pray to God with a Bible in one hand and their gun in another to protect them from whatever terrifying nightmare scenario their leaders can dream up next (see: “The Power of Nightmares”, a 2004 BBC documentary), are proactively slamming the door shut on allowing in any substantial number of Syrian refugees, fear-mongering that ISIS or alQaeda could secretly embed terrorists in with the refugees that we allow into this country.

And I’ll bet it’s crossed your mind too. The collateral damage of Republican “fear bombs”.

Two big problems with that: 1) We screen refugees before allowing them into the country, and 2) ISIS and alQaeda don’t need to embed terrorists in with the refugees to “sneak them into the country” when they are already recruiting sympathizers right here at home over the Internet. People that don’t need to pass a background check, speak fluent “American”, and are here already.

And don’t these same concerns apply to Germany & the rest of Europe as well? Germany has already allowed in so many Syrian refugees that they’ve had to put the breaks on (temporarily) so that they can process all the people flocking to their country. They too are performing “background checks” (can’t confirm, but they were checking “Iraqi” refugees as recently as 2009) while the German people stand cheering welcoming the refugees as they arrive. Americans… especially members of a certain Party that touts “Family Values” and has claimed Jesus Christ himself as one of their own… should be ashamed of themselves.

But they’re not.

Rep. Michael McCaul fear-mongered last week that the Obama Administration is opening up a “Jihadi Pipeline” for allowing in a paltry 10,000 refugees (which is up only slightly from the 5,000 to 8,000 we already allow each year) over the next two years. For weeks, the same GOP presidential candidates that have been encouraging their moron supporters (definitely not DIScouraging them) that President Obama is making a deal with Iran because “he’s one of them“, is now fear-mongering that Obama is blindly inviting “terrorists” into our country. The #2 GOP frontrunner, Ben Carson… whose brain I’ve compared to an overflowing shotglass… warned on ABC’s “ThisWeek“ yesterday that we need to “screen” any Syrian refugees coming into this country. I’m sure he thinks he’s the first one to think of that.

When one million Iraqis were fleeing the violence in Iraq in a mass exodus in 2004/2005…
 


 

…the Bush Administration was criticized for focusing on Iraqi refugees that had aided U.S. forces in Iraq, but not so-much Iraqi civilians fleeing the war.

If the Obama Administration doesn’t want to be compared to the Bush Administration with regards to how welcoming we are to the people whom we are responsible for turning into “the wretched refuse”, it needs to make the case to the American people that it is our obligation… not just as a leading factor in their misery, but as the supposed “Christian nation” Republicans claim us to be… to allow in at least ten times as many Syrian refugees as we have already agreed to. The “security threat” is minimal, while the International Good Will it would generate is immeasurable.
 

BTW: Even if you think you’ve read the plaque on the Statue of Liberty, read it again, in full:
 

Lady Liberty’s credo: The New Colossus
Plaque on Lady Liberty

 

I turn your attention to the official name of the Statue of Liberty: “Mother of Exiles.”

Postscript: I was able to fix the bugs in the preferred “Emerald” theme chosen by readers last year, which hopefully you should find easier to read. – Mugsy

Addendum 9/29/15: John Oliver debunks RW fears over immigration. Not terrorists. Not a drain on society (actually a benefit.)
 

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September 14, 2015 · Admin Mugsy · 4 Comments - Add
Posted in: General, Middle East, National Security, Seems Obvious to Me, Terrorism, War

4 Responses

  1. Admin Mugsy - September 14, 2015

    Follow-up: YouTube is suddenly littered with videos claiming to show Syrian refugees rioting and waving the ISIS flag.

    I have yet to see any evidence to support these claims. NONE of them come from a legitimate news broadcast, but instead from people claiming to show us “what the Liberal Media won’t show us”… a meme that is almost exclusively American, not that of a videographer in Germany or Greece.

  2. charlie fiftywatts - September 17, 2015

    I love this blog, and wish there were some conversation in the comments.Perhaps, like me, people find their comments don’t post? I don’t know.But I’ll try posting this…I usually agree fully with what you writeand you’ll probably think I’m terrible for saying thisbut this time I don’t agree. ALL muslims should be deported from ALL the western nations they’ve infiltrated.They’re only there because they want to take overand I’m sure you’ll find any decent poll will show an overwhelming majority of Americans, and in fact Europeans too, agree with this.They hate us, they hate our way of life,all they come here for is to go around in their black terrorist robes  saying “F America” and “F the police”, while they try and inflict their religious rules on us. Well we don’t want that. We don’t want the misogynist code of the pedophile worshiping savages who hate us shoved down our throats. You know we USED to be fair-minded, like you express (about there being just a “few bad apples”) but they’ve made it abundantly clear they hate us and just want to take over by infiltration, so they need to leave!!!People “immigrating” to here, though hate us virulently DOESN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE.

  3. Admin Mugsy - September 17, 2015

    Thanks for the replies Charlie, but based on your comments, I’m reasonably certain you don’t know or have not spent much time with many Muslims.

    Like any other group of people, they are too diverse to generalize about. Yes, they have their “Evangelical” zealots that can be vicious and rationalize doing people harm, but what religion does not?

    A Right-Wing friend of mine once complained to me of “rock-throwing Palestinians” as being “animals”, while he himself frequently talked of using guns to defend himself. I asked him, “What is a gun but a device to throw a ‘rock’ at high speed?” He was looking down his nose at people that were basically doing the exact same thing as him, just in a more primitive way. And I don’t think he had ever thought of himself and “them” as having anything in common.

    We are all products of our environment, and when you have an entire class of people who are lumped together for the actions of a few, all you do is serve to bring those two groups closer together, radicalizing people that were not radicals before only because you made them feel like they don’t belong, unwelcome to join in your society, so they seek out one where they ARE welcomed.

    And when that happens, are you part of the problem or part of the solution?

  4. charlie fiftywatts - September 17, 2015

    sorry that’s not the opinion you want to hear,but please keep up the good work, writing theseI enjoy your blog immensely , and virtually always find your views refreshingly not right wing.

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