Writers Argue Policies of Obama and EU Have Caused Both US & Europe to be Beseiged by Refugees

[ScottL]

August 30, 2015

The West’s boomerang
By Boaz Bismuth, ISRAEL HAYOM

It has been a difficult summer for Europe. After the economic crisis in Greece rattled EU stability, the worst refugee crisis since World War II is now threatening the Schengen Agreement of 1985, which established the gradual abolition of border checks.

While EU heads of state are struggling to find a solution, hundreds of thousands of refugees continue to flood into Europe through any possible breach, on land and sea.

Extreme right-wing parties on the continent are exploiting the dire situation to further radicalize their immigration policies, primarily because the average EU citizen believes immigration is the most concerning issue of the day.

The horrific story of 60 men, eight women and three children whose bodies were found in a refrigeration truck in Austria on Thursday has grabbed people’s attention. Apparently, the deceased were from Syria. They fled one horror only to find a worse one. It is unclear who is more cruel — Islamic State terrorists or the people who let them across the border with the promise of a better life.

In the case of the Syrian refugees, they really aren’t seeking a better life, rather just to live. Twenty-four hours prior to the refrigerator truck incident, dozens of refugees drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. As the horrific stories at sea become commonplace, the Europeans need to be aware that if they don’t cope with the illegal immigration and refugee problem they are liable to see an increase in similar atrocities.

EU leaders are anxious. The sizeable refugee crisis, which has grown significantly worse because of the war in Syria and Iraq, is now undermining one of the EU’s fundamental cornerstones — the aforementioned Schengen Agreement. Many citizens in Germany, France and Great Britain have no faith in the barbed wire fence haphazardly being built by Hungary.

The average German citizen is surely thinking to himself: What, after finally absorbing my brothers from the East, I now have to absorb the rest of the world? In all likelihood this is not sitting well with him. In France, far Right leader Marine Le Pen has already declared the need to end all immigration — legal and illegal.

Newspaper headlines in Britain are also testifying to Europe’s considerable anxiety. For anyone who has forgotten, incidentally: The EU won the Nobel Peace Prize several years ago. The refugees are today are calling that prize into question.

Europe now needs to decide what to do. Perhaps the need is for a joint solution, whereby countries will share the burden together; or perhaps every country will seek to cope with the problem on its own — which of course could potentially lead to the far right rising to power in an EU member state.

It would also be remiss not to address the EU’s foreign policy mistakes, aided by the United States, which have contributed to the crisis. In the name of a promised democracy, the EU helped topple Gadhafi in Libya, greatly increasing the number of refugees. In Syria, meanwhile, in the name of some far-fetched hope for stability, Assad has not been toppled and 4 million Syrian refugees are the result.

And, as we know, when mistakes are made the piper must be paid.

=======================================================================

"Both the US and Europe are being overwhelmed by refugees and migrants as a result of Obama’s policies. Obama with the support of Britain and France overthrew Qadaffi resulting in the destruction of Libya and the invasion of Europe by refugees from there.

Obama also decided to overthrow Assad and supported all kinds of Sunni groups to do so. Now he has switched gears and is supporting keeping Asaad in power of a smaller Syria. As a result 250,000 people are dead and hundreds of thousands of refugees are streaming into Europe. Lebanon is destabilized and Jordan is threatened.

Obama also removed the last American marines from Iraq a few years ago and now Iraq has fallen apart. Iran has begun taking over Shiite Iraq and is also trying to destabilize Yemen. Obama has decided that what is needed in the ME is Iran hegemony so he is aiding them to achieve it. Talk about a screw up." ~ Ted Belman

 

[ScottL]

Somewhat related.....

Dividing the Arabs: America and Europe’s Double Game

by Bassam Tawil, GATESTONE INSTITUTE

Iran is on its way in a few years to having nuclear weapons capability. The breakout time, according to President Obama, would effectively be “zero.” Iran could then make as many bombs as it would like, along with intercontinental ballistic missiles to delver them to major American cities, directly from Iran, from South America, or — making identification and retaliation impossible — from submarines submerged off the U.S. coast.

Obama with one hand allows Iran to glide to nuclear capability and encourage the Muslim Brotherhood and similar Islamist terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula — while with the other hand, he claims to support Israel.

Qatar’s role is duplicitous. It plays host to U.S. military bases at the same time that it funds and supports ISIS.

Hamas, since last year’s war, has chosen to use its scant resources to rebuild its kidnapping tunnels and war capability, instead of developing businesses and turning the Gaza Strip into a magnificent Arab Riviera, as Dubai has become. Hamas’s failure does not come from a lack of resources; it comes from a deliberate choice of how to use them.

The Iranians, in opposing American policy, which is a tissue of amateur plans and plots, are flexible and exploit Islam’s taqiyya [dissimulation] — religious approval to lie in the cause of Allah and to further Islam. However, they are not even bothering with that, they are telling the truth: “Death to America; Death to Israel.”

The United States is playing a double game in the Middle East: empowering Shiite Iran, while at the same time enabling Sunni ISIS to overthrow the moderate Arab regimes, as if to stop Iran.

The Americans are well aware that the Sunni Arab countries around Iran will now have to arm themselves to the teeth, thereby gutting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

America, despite its power and the image it projects of working against ISIS in Iraq, does not touch ISIS in its real headquarters, Syria, where ISIS actually could actually be hurt. So nothing really changes, and both Iran and ISIS continue to strengthen.

Even as the members the UN Security Council, eager do business with Iran, voted to allow Iran to build nuclear weapons, the Iranians continue to fund Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip — all Iranian proxies — in order to split the Arab ranks.

In other words, the hypocritical Obama administration, in backing the Iranians, keeps trying to sabotage the Arabs and provoke dissension.

The U.S. “divide-and-conquer” policy can also be seen in America’s ongoing support for Turkey and Qatar, both loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey and Qatar, however, do nothing but foment incitement and support terrorist organizations. Both countries have totally abandoned the real existential interest of the Arab nation: its historic battle against Iran.

Qatar’s role is duplicitous. It plays host to U.S. military bases at the same time that it funds and supports ISIS, which is working against the West and against moderate Arab regimes.

The worst, however, is Turkey, which supports ISIS — the enemy of the West — despite Turkey being a member of NATO. Turkey also expends inordinate efforts at retaining its control of occupied Cyprus. Above all, its hypocrisy is scandalous. While it claims to care about the independence and human rights of the Palestinians, Turkey is really nothing but a radical Islamist country now denying independence and human rights to its own Kurdish citizens. At the same time, it supports Hamas and Iran in their effort to crush the unity of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the PLO as the only legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people.

Turkey, like many other nations, including the countries that negotiated with Iran, is just waiting for the sanctions to be lifted from Iran, so that its dubious military and economic relations with the Mullahs will finally be acceptable.

Turkey and Qatar have also divided the Sunni Islamic camp and fragmented the Arab ranks. Both countries give the Palestinians political support, the deluded hope of “return,” and funding that is used for rebuilding Hamas’s military capabilities and kidnapping tunnels.

It is both folly and underhandedness for the United States to provide these countries with even a tattered umbrella of military aid.

Not only the U.S. but Europe, which supports Iran, would like to see Hamas — a terrorist offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood — become stronger at the expense of the Palestinian people.

Europe would like to empower Hamas even further by handing it diplomatic and political support. There are rumors that the UN is planning to grant Hamas observer status in the General Assembly, as it did the Palestinian Authority.

We all know that the issue of Palestine could have been resolved long ago by establishing a demilitarized Palestinian state next to Israel, and giving the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees living in the Arab states full citizenship. But the manipulations employed by the Europeans and Americans deliberately perpetuate the Palestinian issue by using “good cop – bad cop” tactics.

Europe and the U.S. whitewash not only Hamas’s threats to Israel, but also, more importantly, its deadly subversion of Palestinian Authority. Both Europe and America totally disregard Hamas’s planned coup against PA leader Mahmoud Abbas last year, Hamas’s war crimes in the Gaza Strip, and the unspeakable treatment of its own people at home. Only one year ago, Hamas was murdering its own citizens extra-judicially, and ordering them to be cannon fodder for the benefit of international television crews.

Hamas, since then, has chosen to use its scant resources to rebuild its kidnapping tunnels and war capability, instead of to develop businesses and turn the Gaza Strip into a magnificent Arab Riviera, as Dubai has become. Hamas’s failure does not come from a lack of resources; it comes from a deliberate choice of how to use them.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are now operating against Egypt and Israel not only from the Gaza Strip, but from the Sinai Peninsula as well. Thus, in addition to allowing Iran to sail to nuclear weapons capability, President Obama encourages the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula with one hand, while with the other hand he claims to support Israel.

After all is said and done, if we Arabs had joined ranks — even temporarily and even with Israel — we could have long ago put a stop to Iran’s plans for expansion.

But because of our own shortsightedness, we waited too long and now the Iranians have established footholds in the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea, and are increasing their control of Arab states such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

Iran is on its way in a few years to having nuclear weapons capability. The breakout time, according to President Obama, would effectively be “zero.” Iran could then make as many bombs as it would like, along with intercontinental ballistic missiles to delver them to the major cities of the “Great Satan,” the United States, directly from Iran, from South America, or — making identification and retaliation impossible — from submarines submerged off the U.S. coast.

The Iranians, in opposing American policy, which is a tissue of amateur plans and plots, are flexible and exploit Islam’s taqiyya [dissimulation] — religious approval to lie in the cause of Allah and to further Islam. However, they are not even bothering with that, they are telling the truth: “Death to America; Death to Israel.”

By this point, near the end of the process of Sunni Muslim self-destruction, a large part of the Arabs’ energy has been wasted on internal wars and the misallocation of resources to the barren, useless confrontation with Israel, even while many Arab states secretly collaborate with the Zionists.

All that will be left for the Arabs will be to continue to argue among themselves and with the Israelis about the Palestinian issue. We should instead stop the distractions and the wounds we are inflicting upon ourselves, and put the Palestinian problem behind us by granting equal rights and citizenship to Palestinians residing in Arab countries, in order to shift our focus totally, if belatedly, to the real battle: The Islamic Republic of Iran.

 

[Dave007inVegas]

Obama makes a mess wherever he goes and whatever he does.

He is the epitome ineptitude.

As for the EU leaders, it appears they aren’t any better.

 

[texansfan]

Obama is the worlds bitch.

 

[ScottL]

Admiral Ace Lyons destroys Obama admin and its objectives in a private meeting with Kerry in the room. He even destroys Reagan's SOD Caspar Weinberger for refusing to execute an order to respond to the marine barracks bombing. He then calls Islam a political movement masquerading as a religion:

 

[Dave007inVegas]

For a lack of a better place to post this.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...idgen-of-evidence-suggesting-im-anti-semitic/

President Obama challenged critics who suggested that he was anti-Semitic as he continues to promote his nuclear deal with Iran, ignoring Israeli leaders who are expressing concerns about it.

“There’s not a smidgen of evidence for it, other than the fact that there have been times where I’ve disagreed with a particular Israeli government’s position on a particular issue,” Obama said in an interview with Forward.com when asked how he felt about the accusation.

Does anyone remember the last time he used the phrase “There’s not a smidgen of evidence?”

 

[ScottL]

I don't think he's bigoted toward Jews; he just has a very distorted and dangerous worldview. Hopefully in his next position he'll hold much less influence over important matters that impact our world.

 

[Dave007inVegas]

I don't think he's bigoted toward Jews; he just has a very distorted and dangerous worldview. Hopefully in his next position he'll hold much less influence over important matters that impact our world.

To each his own.

 

[ScottL]

To each his own.

 

[ScottL]

• Europe's New Migration Era - Eyal Zisser
  The Europeans apparently don't quite understand the world they are living in. The tens of thousands of migrants banging on their door are merely the tip of the iceberg, which will fully emerge the moment millions of people in the Middle East realize that Europe is giving up and opening its gates. The real problem is rooted in the uninhibited natural growth that has occurred in the Middle East, which has not coincided with sufficient economic growth to balance it.
• 
  While Europe's population over the past 50 years has grown by about a quarter, from 400 million people in 1960 to around 500 million at the start of this decade, the Middle East's population has grown fourfold - from 100 million in 1960 to 400 million in 2010. The problem at Europe's doorstep, therefore, is not a few million Syrians seeking refuge from war. It is the tens of millions who want to leave the Arab world - a world that offers no hope and no future - and move to Europe. Prof. Eyal Zisser is former director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. (Israel Hayom)
• On a sidenote this post just 'migrated' a 'Vit vs Ace' thread to page 2

 

[neverbend]

Europe is headed for disaster, the most enlightened of the bunch is Slovakia saying
it will only accept Christian refugees under an EU relocation scheme. This statement
was beautiful by Slovakia's Interior Ministry spokesman Ivan Metik:
"We could take Muslims but we don't have any mosques in Slovakia so how can Muslims
be integrated if they are not going to like it here?

The German Bundestag's foreign affairs committee, sharply criticized Slovakia
for rejecting Muslim refugees.

We need guys like Metik here in the USA

 

[Dave007inVegas]

Islam’s goal is to rule the world. They reproduce at a much higher rate than the rest of the world. What better way to infiltrate other countries than mass migration. It’s designed to put social and economic strain on it’s enemies.

The rest of the world just can’t see the forest for the trees.

 

[neverbend]

Most Countries most likely to survive immigration infestation because of tough
anti-Immigration policies
1) Australia
2) Slavokia
3) Hungary
4) Czech Republic

 

[Ricboff]

territorial wise, Germany is tiny. Merkel, WTF is going on? .....as it turns out it DOES pay to ensure peace in the middle east. Not to turn a blind eye. Now that countries have to deal with ripple effects on the home front , will they continue to be passive on foreign policy?

German Border Controls Not Stopping Migrant Flow



FREILASSING, GERMANY—


Germany's decision to implement border restrictions has not stopped the flow of migrants into the country, which is now taking extraordinary measures to deal with the massive influx.
German officials said they had taken at least 1,000 undocumented people into custody at the border crossing with Austria on the main rail and highway route between Vienna and Munich.
In an unprecedented step, German police boarded trains and checked documents of passengers entering from Austria and Hungary. Hundreds of migrants and refugees, mostly from Syria, were escorted off the trains at Freilassing and put in a holding area where they were called, one by one, to be fingerprinted, registered, and boarded on buses for transfer to other parts of Germany


German police were also stopping and searching cars on the highway at the border, snarling traffic for several kilometers. Some motorists said they waited three hours to cross the border on Monday night.
The decision to impose border restrictions effectively suspended Germany’s participation in the 1985 Schengen agreement that provides for free movement within Europe’s member states.
For the refugees making the journey on Monday and early Tuesday, it meant more anxiety at the end of a difficult month-long journey.
“I don’t know why we got off the train,” said one refugee from Syria, who asked a reporter not to use his name or show his face. “They told us to come and do a check for health, give us food, and did not move after that,” he said, as he stood behind a police line on the station platform. “I do not know what will happen the next day. Where we’re going now, I do not know.”
Some of the refugees said they were worried about being fingerprinted, a concern they have expressed throughout the journey out of fear that establishing a record may result in their deportation or exclusion from EU countries.
News - albeit inaccurate - that Germany had closed its border with Austria caused anxiety, but it did not change the resolve of hundreds of migrants.
A Syrian refugee who also asked not to be identified, said he heard about the border restrictions while in Austria and decided to come anyway. “Somebody told me that Germany had closed the border,” he said. “We decided that our chances would not be good by train, so we decided to come here walking. We saw a river, removed our vestments and swam.”


German officials expect one million migrants to enter this year. They suggest their reason for imposing border restrictions is meant more as a measure to establish control over an influx that shows few signs of letting up.
“The biggest challenge is logistics,” said Rainer Scharf, a spokesman for German federal police. “It is difficult to get all the people to the buses in an organized way, as well as giving them food. We have to accommodate them for the process of registration and proceed them to other refugee centers throughout Germany.”
Those being detained at the border are held in custody for attempting to migrate illegally, without passports or visas. German authorities are then sending them to registration centers, in most cases letting them settle temporarily and then allowing them to apply for asylum.
Germany is the destination of choice for the vast majority of migrants interviewed by VOA along various points of the journey through the Balkans, Hungary, and Austria.


Many of the migrants are professionals and businesspeople who say it is not economic reasons but fear for their personal safety in Syria, where rebels are battling the forces of President Bashir Assad. They chose Germany because of its reputation as a place where immigrants get substantial social benefits that include housing, education, subsistence and health.
But once here, the dream has often not materialized, or at least not quickly enough.
Honas Issa, a 23-year-old information technology specialist from Syria, said he applied for asylum in Germany more than a year ago and he passed through the Freilassing train station on the way back from the government office that is handling his application.
He said the authorities have lost his file. “I’ve called them, no answer,” he said.
Issa said that while his application has been in process, he is not allowed to work and is living on public funds that barely cover food expenses. He feels he is losing time, and patience. “I’m not so happy to sleep at home, 24 hours, like old people. I am young. I have an urge to study, to do something. I have good experience. I have a Microsoft certificate. I can do a lot, but nobody cares about that.”
Some of the migrants say they want to continue on to Sweden which, like Germany, has a reputation for welcoming the migrants and offering them assistance.
On another platform at the station, a Syrian refugee waits for instructions from police on where to go next. He plans to go the Netherlands, where he has friends and family.
Glancing at the large group starting to assemble in the holding area, he explains his decision to not stay in Germany. “There're too many people staying here in Germany. Maybe this will make it troublesome for me to find work and settle.”

you got this, right?....... hun?

 

[SheriffJoe]

Islam’s goal is to rule the world. They reproduce at a much higher rate than the rest of the world. What better way to infiltrate other countries than mass migration. It’s designed to put social and economic strain on it’s enemies.

The rest of the world just can’t see the forest for the trees.

You're not kidding, especially those Euroweenies.

Expelling Jews while importing more Muslims is beyond insane!

 

[Ricboff]

um, Angela sent this via Gregorian.......damn, the beautiful sisters side by side.....

 

[Dave007inVegas]

Stupid is as stupid does.

FEDERAL DATA: U.S. ANNUALLY ADMITS QUARTER OF A MILLION MUSLIM MIGRANTS

http://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...-admits-quarter-of-a-million-muslim-migrants/

In 2013 alone, 117,423 migrants from Muslim-majority countries were permanently resettled within the United States— having been given lawful permanent resident status. Additionally in 2013, the United States voluntarily admitted an extra 122,921 temporary migrants from Muslim countries as foreign students and foreign workers as well as 39,932 refugees and asylees from Muslim countries.

Thus, twelve years after the September 11th hijackers were invited into the country on temporary visas, the U.S. decided to admit 280,276 migrants from Muslim countries within a single fiscal year.

To put these numbers into perspective, this means that every year the U.S. admits a number of Muslim migrants larger in size than the entire population of Des Moines, Iowa; Lincoln, Nebraska; or Dayton, Ohio.

:monsters-

 

[ScottL]

Our border problem is solvable. It will take prioritization and time. However the world migration crisis, due to the fact so many factions are battling for supremacy in Middle Eastern Countries with no outcome good for the people, may be unsolvable. These videos are heartbreaking.

 

[ScottL]

 

[ScottL]

America’s Moral Obligation
To Refugees From Syria
Looms for President Obama

By CONRAD BLACK, Special to the Sun | September 23, 2015


The unannounced policy of the Obama administration of progressively withdrawing from much of the world, while it has been riddled with inconsistencies and been the subject of endless dissembling, is starting to incite regional powers to fill part of the resulting vacuum. The most positive recent example of this is the long-awaited determination of the Japanese diet to approve the dispatch of Japanese military forces beyond immediate Japanese territorial limits, even if Japan itself is not under attack.


For the first time in the 70 years since the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II, after having been driven back 2,000 miles in the central and southwest Pacific and flung out of the Philippines, after losing its entire navy, and after enduring the only two military applications of the atomic bomb, Japan is resuming its role as one of the world’s great powers. Prime Minister Abe has explicitly predicted much closer cooperation between the Japanese navy (self-defense force) and the U.S. Seventh Fleet.


Mr. Abe has made no secret of the fact that the increased assertiveness of China has been the principal motive of his government in enabling Japan to join with other regional powers in countering Chinese claims to large stretches of the far Pacific. By some measurements, Japan has the world’s fifth-largest navy now, including two helicopter carriers, and clearly has the ability and the will to resume its formidable naval tradition as an ancient seafaring island nation.


Less straightforward, and certainly less benign, is the deployment of advanced interceptors and apparently several thousand ground troops by Russia to Syria. The West attempted to ostracize Russia for its aggressions in Ukraine, imposing sanctions and taking advantage of the fortuitous reduction in the world oil price by Saudi Arabia, which deprived Vladimir Putin’s government of the means for much adventurism beyond Crimea and Donbas.


The Obama administration’s feckless assertions that Syrian president Bashar Assad “must go,” with no follow-up, and vague notions of supporting “moderate” forces in the Syrian civil war against both Mr. Assad and the barbarous onslaught of the Islamic State, effectively encouraged the intensification of the civil war to the point where ISIS controls half the country, Mr. Assad a quarter, and other factions, which would include the U.S. protégé if there were one, the rest. More than 4 million refugees have fled the country, and almost 8 million others have been displaced within it.


Hundreds of thousands have got to Europe, where most are stopped at the borders in desperate and disorderly conditions. Russia now presents the only visible force of potential stability, and the West is in no position to object to Russia’s propping up of Mr. Assad. Certainly, should there be any direct encounter between ISIS and trained units of the Russian army, the successors to the victors of Stalingrad will make short work of a force whose specialties are circulating videos of the beheading of defenseless Westerners and the destruction of historic monuments and antiquities.


American and Western European influence in the Middle East has sunk to such a nadir that Mr. Putin is the closest there is to an outside civilizing influence in the region. Americans should be aware that, with the best will in the world, American influence in the region over the last nearly 40 years since the Camp David Agreement (1978) has been almost wholly negative, except for the expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. The Carter administration is complicit in the overthrow of the shah, and the Obama administration has facilitated the nuclear militarization of the ayatollahs.


The Iraq War, which was designed to democratize Iraq, atomized the country, and the George W. Bush administration’s demobilization of 400,000 soldiers and police, who went into unemployment with their weapons and munitions, created chaos that was brought somewhat under control by the troop surge but exploded again after the abrupt departure of remaining American forces in 2011. Iranian influence predominates in the majority of Iraq, and apart from Kurdistan, ISIS predominates in the rest, as well as in much of Syria.


The agitation for democracy in the Middle East by the second Bush administration elevated Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Here, we dodged the bullet, as the Brotherhood mismanaged its position and was overthrown by the military leadership it had installed, and was sent packing for violations of the constitution that it had largely written, somewhat in the manner of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. Yet the administration and even certain Republicans, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham, badgered the new, pro-Western secular regime to be more generous to the Brotherhood.


It is rarely a benign circle in the Middle East. Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Anwar Sadat (eventually murdered by an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood) practically bundled the Russians right out of the Middle East in the mid Seventies. Barack Obama, by his self-evaporating “red line” in Syria (which dumped the issue of Assad’s gassing his citizens into the lap of the Russians) and his refusal to play any role in supporting a palatable alternative in the Syrian war, is ushering the Russians back into the region now.


The mighty effort in Iraq has delivered most of that country from the odious Saddam to the even more odious Iranian theocrats and Islamic State, and the U.S. is reduced to encouraging the Iranians in their efforts to keep ISIS out of Baghdad. Given this grim and ludicrous sequence of events, a general and official American desire to be done with the region is understandable, as is the fact that that desire is largely shared in the region.


But history, including the 9/11 attacks, indicates that, as the American enemies of isolation concluded at the end of World War II, ignoring explosive regions of the distant world generally causes their violence not to bypass the United States but to arrive at its shores. American disillusionment with commitment of forces to the Middle East is certainly understandable, but so is the widespread view in the Middle East that the ineffectual responses of the Clinton administration to the early terrorist acts (the first World Trade Center attack, 1993; the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia, 1996; the attack on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and on the USS Cole, all in 1998), the George W. Bush wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the waffling and posturing of the Obama years are all parts of the problem.


Given President Obama’s (completely unintended) role in generating the terrible and pitiful flight of millions of people from their homes in Syria and Iraq, it is contemptible that he should speak of possibly admitting just 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States. Of the 4 million Syrians who have fled the country, about 1.7 million are in Turkey, where the Turkish government is making a reasonable effort to retain them in sanitary camps, adequately fed and sheltered.


On a relatively positive note, over 700,000 have arrived in Lebanon and have diluted the importance in that country of Hezbollah, a terrorist movement sustained by the Iranians via the Assad government; and perhaps 500,000 Syrians have been taken in, at least temporarily, in Jordan, where they dilute the demographic strength of the Palestinians in the Hashemite kingdom. Over 500,000 have arrived this year on the borders of the European Union, especially Greece, Italy, and Hungary, creating a humanitarian crisis as well as acute stresses within the EU, where agreed policy is for the border states to determine in which country asylum applicants are seeking to reside.


This is not a system that can function under the pressure of such numbers. France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have been generous in the numbers of refugees they have accepted in recent years. But in the current circumstances, the violence in Syria and Iraq has contributed a majority of the migrants, including over 500,000 Christians, chased out of the cradle of civilization, where they have lived for 2,000 years. Given inadvertent American complicity in causing or aggravating these conditions and migrations, there is a moral obligation for the United States to try to help organize an effective international safety net for these destitute people.


​The U.S. generously helped the displaced of Europe after both World Wars, distributing food and assistance that saved the lives of millions of people. It evacuated and admitted 130,000 Vietnamese refugees when that country was overrun by the North Vietnamese in 1975. It is unbecoming and un-American for this administration to pretend, however accelerated its withdrawal from some parts of the world​, that it has no role or duty beyond the eventual admission of a risibly small number of people.


No sane person is asking the United States to accept an indigestible number of people, and the U.S. certainly has the right to reduce its involvement in the world, though anyone but America’s enemies would hope for a more elegant and coherent approach to that policy than the one this administration has pursued. But the United States has no right smugly to proclaim that this is a crisis that has nothing to do with the U.S., renouncing a shining American tradition of humanitarian assistance in times of mortal threat to masses of innocent civilians and washing its hands of it.