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Seems like the smoke is starting to clear and we are finally getting some clear coherent OP-EDS to read.
I find this one well thought out and informative as well,
Unsettling Words on Resettling Refugees
By Carl M. Cannon
November 22, 2015
Americans first learned that the tentacles of ancient Mideast hatreds could reach across the ocean and into the bosom of our society on June 5, 1968—the night an Arab immigrant named Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Robert F. Kennedy hours after RFK had won California’s presidential primary.
Sirhan Sirhan was a Christian, not a Muslim. Yet, he was a harbinger of a pattern that has spread fear across Europe and the United States nearly five decades later: Brought here by parents seeking a better life, he never made it in the West. Not having assimilated—or become a U.S. citizen—Sirhan went to Jordan, was radicalized, and returned with murder in his heart.
Variations of this disturbing drama have occurred repeatedly since then, sometimes by jihadists born in the West and radicalized in the dark corners of cyberspace. The place names are seared into our memories: Fort Hood, Chattanooga, the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, and now the streets, cafes, music halls, and soccer stadiums of Paris.
The carnage in France is most disturbing, and not only for the extent of the violence. A Syrian passport found near one of the suicide bombers convinced authorities that one of the killers had been granted asylum—precisely what skeptics of mass Syrian immigration predicted would happen.
America may be obliged, for reasons unrelated to the inscription on the Statue of Liberty or holiday season humanitarianism, to accept Syrian refugees. But there’s a right way to talk about this—and a wrong way—irrespective of one’s position.
Sens. thingy Durbin of Illinois and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota illustrated the right way in a May 21 letter to President Obama urging him to agree to take 65,000 Syrian refugees. Their letter was signed by 12 other Senate Democrats.
“As the Syrian conflict enters its 5th year with no end in sight, we respectfully request that your Administration take action to significantly increase the number of Syrian refugees who are resettled in the United States,” it began. “Our nation’s founders came to our shores to escape religious persecution and the United States has a long tradition of providing safe haven to refugees.”
Although he disagrees, Sen. Dan Coats, an Indiana Republican, also took the high road, as did most members of his party.
“The tragic situation in Syria has created a refugee and migration crisis that is overwhelming the mechanisms set up by the international community to deal with such movements,” Coats said this week. “Here in the United States, we are having difficult but important conversations about how to balance legitimate security concerns with our country’s legacy of compassion.”
Coats outlined his ideas. He called for a more holistic response beginning with the international community setting up safe havens along the borders of Turkey, Iraq and Jordan to be managed under U.N. auspices; no-fly zones enforced by the U.S. military and our allies; a concerted effort to end the civil war that caused this crisis; and massive assistance from the world community to neighboring countries already caring for millions of people.
So, here are two opposing policy views, expressed respectfully and empathically. Then there’s the other way. Ben Carson equated violent Islamic radicalism with rabies, which is okay, except that in his analogy, peaceful immigrants are dogs. Donald Trump vowed that if he’s elected, the Syrians already here “would be gone.” Mike Huckabee thought it clever to say that we should “wake up and smell the falafel.”
When it comes to partisan cheap shots, however, President Obama was in a class all own. For three straight days he lashed out at Republicans who expressed opposition to accepting Syrian refugees, and did so while on foreign soil.
“Apparently they are scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America,” Obama sneered in the Philippines. “At first, they were too scared of the press being too tough on them in the debates. Now they are scared of 3-year-old orphans. That doesn’t seem so tough to me.”
When Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush suggested that Syrian Christians and ethnic Yazidis be given priority, Obama called the idea “shameful,” adding that we should “not to feed that dark impulse inside of us.”
“When you start seeing individuals in position of responsibility suggesting Christians are more worthy of protection than Muslims are in a war-torn land,” he added, “that feeds the [ISIS] narrative.”
Notwithstanding the fact that Obama’s story line has taken hold in the mainstream media, this is precisely backward. Syrian Christians are fleeing their home country because they were ticketed for extermination. “Genocide” is the word you’d hope administration officials would use, not “narrative.” What Obama is really doing is demonizing political dissent. His default response to anyone who says his foreign policy is a disaster is to label them racist or un-American.
If you’re reading this column, there’s a good chance the president means you. Two recent polls show that a majority of Americans don’t want to take in any Syrian refugees right now. Thirty-one governors are on record as opposing resettlements in their states, and a huge majority in the House of Representatives, including 47 Democrats, bucked the White House and supported legislation to strengthen the refugee vetting process. Obama was calling them all cowards the same week a female terrorist linked to the Paris attackers tried to kill French police officers with a suicide bomb and Turkish officials were arresting ISIS fighters posing as refugees. In doing so, the president appalled even longtime critics, while dismaying many supporters and leaving the rest of us perplexed. He’s poisoned the air of a 2016 presidential campaign that already had too much toxic talk about immigrants.
Obama has also alienated those who think America is duty-bound to accept some Syrian refugees. I know because I’m one of them. Why are we obligated to do that? Here’s why: because the United States helped wreck their country. To be more precise, decisions made by the current U.S. president and his predecessor—George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq before it was stable, and his drawing of a “red line” in Syria that he ignored—caused region-wide chaos and violence, resulting in millions of displaced people fleeing Syria and Iraq.
The upshot was that a group of Sunni fanatics carved out a Belgium-sized enclave from land in those two countries and made it into a hellhole. Wanting to help the victims is a very American impulse. Worrying that bringing them here is dangerous is simple common sense. Partisanship has no place in that discussion. Nor does petulance. It would be nice if the president treated those who disagree with him as people genuinely concerned about their families’ safety instead of as saboteurs trying to undermine his legacy. It’s not always about him.
In “The Onion Field,” the 1973 book about the murder of Los Angeles policeman Ian Campbell, author Joseph Wambaugh relates a scene that captures the mindset of a narcissist.
Cop-killers Jimmy Lee Smith and Gregory Ulas Powell are in the L.A. county jail when their escape plan is foiled—they believe it’s because of a lockdown imposed because a new inmate, Sirhan Sirhan, has been brought into the facility. “It’s just my luck,” Smith complains. “If only the A-rab hadn’t of dusted Kennedy. Everything happens to me.”
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington Bureau Chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.
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