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His Name Is Aylan
His name is Aylan and he is Kurdish, the small child I see lying face down on a European shore. He died as his family tried to escape Syria, and the images of his tiny lifeless body has sparked an understandable anger across the world.
I feel the same outrage in me, and I know where I want to place that pain and condemnation – at the feet of President Barack Obama.
For the better (or worse) part of six years, Obama has tilted the world to this point, where children float up on foreign shores and families place their fate and belongings in a broken vessel to go anywhere other than where they’ve been.
An hour or so before I saw this picture, I found out that Senator Barbara Mikulski became the deciding vote needed to secure Obama’s Iran deal in Congress. Because the president has been single-mindedly focused on that deal — because he’s been willing to subordinate every other concern in the Middle East to cementing his legacy — we see floods of Arab refugees seeking shelter on European soil. Those who cannot flee are either displaced within the region or become unwilling stars of one of the many horror videos touted by that group with many names and little sovereignty.
There was a time not that long ago when ISIS did not exist and when I had never seen a man beheaded or burnt alive for the world to see. Now images of Yazidi girls sold in slavery pass by my feed alongside memes and selfies. I had gotten so desensitized that I almost forgot that this brutality hasn’t always been part of my existence.
Then I saw that boy, like trash on the beach, with no one to claim him, and I remembered. I remembered how Obama chose to empower Assad, partner with Iran, forgo red lines and destabilize the Middle East.
This is supposed to be the President of humane ideals and progressive values. Yet on his watch young girls are systematically raped in the Levant while the White House spends its time fretting about hookups on college campuses? This commander-in-chief says all options are on the table — yet when Americans are beheaded on screen his response consists of offering PR advice to the terrorists responsible? Not only can’t I make sense of it, but I cannot fathom where the world will be in the 505 days we have left until this man leaves office.
His name is Aylan. He was three years old and he lost his life because his family decided that the unknown on the other side of that dark ocean was safer than the hellhole their country had become. To me, that is, and will forever be, President Obama’s legacy: That child with his face in the water, and the growing evil that placed him there.
His name is Aylan. And his life matters too.
Published in General
Obama is to blame. He delighted in producing “The Arab Spring”. He was stupid and naïve about everything he has done in the middle east. He thought he knew so much more than the actual experts who came before him.
Those poor people are caught up in Obama’s ego trip, to prove he understood, felt the pain, of Muslims in the Middle East. So he sponsored people to over-turn all the governments!!!!
He was wrong. Dead wrong.
Nothing he did was in America’s best interest, or anyone else’s best interest– other that the murdering hordes of radical Islamists. He thought they had a legitimate beef with the West. They didn’t and don’t. The governments that kept them under control did the whole world a favor. They are evil.
If we could put things back the way they were before Obama started his know it all approach to decades of careful balancing in the Middle East, Europe, Syria, Africa, Everywhere would be so much better off. If only we could undo the Obama Administration.
Now masses of the worlds’ population have to relocate, which means more upheaval everywhere. When a population this large relocates it is not peaceful in their new home either.
Obama burned down the world.
I agree with virtually all of this. The visual is a bit unfair, and a person could present similar visuals for all sides of virtually any argument. Islamic terrorists are known to fabricate horrible images and then distribute them to the press for anti-Israeli propaganda.
And no, I don’t hold Obama directly responsible. But the argument is a complicated one – I don’t think there is any such thing as “someone else’s war” in today’s society. We have the power to take sides in various ways, and we should be exercising that power. It is a sort of moral relativism that allows us to turn our backs, and I don’t believe that is a step up from the US that stormed the beaches… To think this will not impact us seems naive. And while I’m pretty strongly in favor of a hands-off libertarian approach to government, I do think that it is immoral for us to ignore these things. We should be talking about sensible interventions, but part of that is something that Obama refuses to do; namely, recognizing the great evil at play, here.
This country IS in the symbolism business – it always has been.
If and when you get your wish, then America will no longer be exceptional, or deserving of G-d’s special grace.
I don’t even like the hyphenated part. We’re just Americans. No prefix, no suffix.
This doesn’t mean that we have to give up the cultural heritage of our foreign ancestors, many of which enrich the entire country.
It is Obama’s fault. And the fault of his supporters.
The Arab Spring was an opportunity – to spread at least a half-baked pro-freedom agenda.
But when America abandoned Iraq, we gave up the best chance in a generation to have an anchor of stability and relative freedom and democracy in the Middle East.
We should have stayed in. I said it then, and I will keep saying it, because it is true.
Jay Nordlinger always tells a story about TX Senator Phil Gramm (I don’t remember the exact context, but anyway): he was arguing with a liberal and the lib says that he cares more about Gramm’s children than Gramm does; and Phil says: tell me their names. Silence.
Knowing Aylan’s name makes this more real and personal for me.
The role of a Superpower is to use its super power. Obama and his team had R2P, they had a red line, then they didn’t, then they were going to do an extremely minuscule strike, then they thought who knows what. Obama and all his team are pathetic failures.
I don’t think the logic is strange at all. Annika is right when she says:
I think that it is fair to blame Obama and his administration in this case, in part, but not because the US has some universal responsibility to solve all of the world’s problems, or to provide a haven for every victim of oppression.
Obama and his administration — including Hillary Clinton in particular, who as SecState bears responsibility second only to the President himself — adopted a disastrous foreign policy in the Middle East. Multiple civil wars, Jihadist savagery, and this type of refugee disaster is the predictable result.
There is grave danger, however, in basing policy decisions on this type of emotionally charged imagery.
What is the name of that standing official from Planned Parenthood? Does he just take photos and measurements? Will he earn any commission?
THESE children are his legacy.
Beautiful worlds Annika. Shalom.
A humanitarian problem is everyone’s problem. Seventy years ago the world also turned away the Jews fleeing Hitler, by ship, train, turned them away, including the U.S. to return back to Europe and face the concentration camps. Ironically, on Public TV this eve, they showed a ship full of Jews who were not allowed to enter Florida. WWII vets spoke of the sacrifice by everyday folks for the cause – walking 5 miles to work to conserve gas – boy scouts with red wagons gathering scrap metal – all to bring a monster down.
Now it is the Christians, but also just people desperate to live. When W left office, neither the Middle East nor Europe looked like this. Russia was in check. China was not skirting Alaska with war ships. People called terrorism and evil by name…..still.
I can’t help but think that our mutilation and murder of the unborn, the carelessness of how we see a human life, is being brought to bear to our shores in the Western world. Europe and the US will be inundated, not just by refugees, but by grave threats that we have ignored and appeased. I feel like God is removing His hand of protection. Annika describes how I feel, and so does Glenn Beck:
http://www.glennbeck.com/2015/09/02/what-are-the-10-reasons-why-glenn-doesnt-recognize-his-country-anymore
Like Marley warned Scrooge, humanity is our business – beware of the chain you labor to build.
According to Mercycorp, out of a (pre-war) Syrian population of 23 m, about 7.6 m are internally displaced and 4 m are refugees outside the country:
Lebanon – 1.2m [there are 4 m Lebanese]
Turkey – 1.6 m
Iraq – 0.2 m
Jordan – 0.6 m [there are 6.3 m Jordanians]
Iraq – 0.1 m
That’s half the population displaced by war. It’s a huge problem for Syria and its neighbours.
Which puts Aylan’s family’s story in a context. From the Guardian:
The Syrian war has consumed over 300,000 lives but has barely registered in the Western consciousness until the last couple of weeks, since the inevitable consequences have washed up on Europe’s shores. The time for action was over three years ago and the place for action was Syria. The West took a look, rattled some sabres,and then chickened out of interfering in the Iranian/Russian sphere of influence. It’s too late now, tragically.
As for President Obama, he made crucial decisions that have contributed to the current disaster but he did so as the duly elected president of the United States of America. That’s democracy.
The State Department relocates refugees every year to the United States.
They bypass the immigration rules to do so.
The State Department is in the process of bringing here 70,000 refugees from Syria. Germany has taken in 800,000, and the European community hopes we will take in more in 2016.
Spectacular news!
That’s a great argument in favor of not only stronger immigration restrictions, but also State Department reform. And from that article you linked, I see that fourteen Senate Democrats are pushing for more to be brought in. What a surprise.
When Obama removed all the troops from Iraq everyone told him what would happen. When Obama ignored his own red line in Syria everyone told him what would happen. When Obama failed to arm the Kurds everyone told him what would happen.
It has happened.
Yes, and…there is no such thing as a “nation of immigrants.”
I want no part of American exceptionalism, and don’t believe in God’s grace. I just want American to be home.
I’m listening to the podcast with the editors, and they are talking about the waves of Middle Eastern immigrants arriving in Europe.
It seems to me it would be impossible to screen them for terrorists. And how convenient it would be for the terrorists to move around the world this way. I don’t think that’s coincidence.
The other thing that is bothering me is that the Islamic State is getting richer and richer stealing the possessions of the refugees. That is a true Nazi move.
The better answer is to stop the Islamic State right now. They have no right to dispossess these people.
At some point, the white settlers who immigrated to the colonies and later United States were immigrants, no? Since they were immigrants at one point, at some point they must have stopped being immigrants if the US is not a nation of immigrants now. Was the US not a nation before that happened?
When did the later waves of immigrants (Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, Poles, etc) assimilate, and for how long were they “not part of the nation”?
We are a very young country, still, as countries go. Most of us know our ancestors haven’t always been here. At what point does that knowledge become irrelevant?
By definition, settlers are not immigrants. Settlers built the the country that future immigrants immigrated to.
Amen.
But realistically speaking, stopping the Islamic State would involve supporting its on-ground and ideological enemies.
Most prominent (effective) among these:
.
There’s a division in the West about whether supporting these is a good idea or not and why. The US clearly opposes 2-4, Europe (being closer to the results of not supporting them) is more open to seeing it as a good idea.
I hadn’t seen that picture before. It’s not the one running in major newspapers.
I think, but I don’t know, that God has a place in heaven for all children, whether they’re Christians or not. I pray that my hope is correct.
Not only can’t I make sense of it, but I cannot fathom where the world will be in the 505 days we have left until this man leaves office.
This is what we get when the US elects an affirmative-action candidate to be president and, having witnessed four years of poor performance, doesn’t have the stones to fire the affirmative-action hire.
What’s bothering me even more is the wealth the Islamic State is accumulating.
Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939. France surrendered to Hitler in June 1940. Less than a year.
I didn’t really grasp this as practical matter until a few years ago when I started studying maps and timetables for World War II.
Essentially, every time Hitler took over a country, he enslaved some of the people, killed some, and conscripted the rest. And he took the wealth of that country.
This is what I see the Islamic State attempting to do.
I hope I’m wrong.
I don’t think you’re wrong Marci.
They loot, and steal and occupy to enrich themselves.
Simply shattering Annika. I have only this to offer:
Prayer to Our Mother of Sorrows
Our mother of sorrows, with strength from above you stood by the cross, sharing in the sufferings of Jesus, and with tender care you bore Him in your arms, mourning and weeping.We praise you for your faith, which accepted the life God planned for you. We praise you for your hope, which trusted that God would do great things in you. We praise you for your love in bearing with Jesus the sorrows of His passion.Holy Mary, may we follow your example, and stand by all your children who need comfort and love.
I would be willing. And although I think you said this sarcastically, it’s a very good idea: A program to match refugees with families willing to sponsor them and take responsibility for them.
I think many Americans would be willing, don’t you?
I read an article yesterday, apropos the recent refugee crisis, that There is a group of Swedes that started such an initiative a few years back, and not only does it seem to be very rewarding but those to date 30 individuals (children under 18 arriving alone) being welcomed that way have been much better integrated into society when introduced to it by private citizens than by the state….
I’m on a few days of mother-son vacation with my oldest son, as an early gift for his Bar Mitzvah.