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ISIS’ Other Victims
These monsters — we run out of words, don’t we? — have victimized so many more people this week than the maimed and murdered in France. So many desperate refugees — fleeing monsters like them — will now again drown in the sea, like they have been, or be shot at the borders, or returned to be imprisoned, starved, tortured, sold into sexual slavery, and barrel-bombed.
That so many in the US are now agitating not to accept refugees breaks my heart. You aren’t wrong about the security risk. But as someone whose entire neighborhood was just turned into an abattoir — as someone who could easily have been in any of those places — I still say: Find a way. We’re America. We’re this country, remember?
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door. ….
We can’t check their backgrounds? Then find another way to give them safe shelter. We can’t save them all? Then save their children, save the women, as many as we can without drowning along with them. The Saudis won’t let them in? Since when do we point our moral compass to Mecca? What are we protecting, if not a civilization that is better than theirs?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,—
Why, you must needs be strangers. Would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? This is the strangers’ case;
And this your mountanish inhumanity.
Don’t let them keep killing. We must protect their victims.
On another note, after more than two months of relative calm, fighting is starting up again in eastern Ukraine. Of course it is. Putin’s got Europe on his side now. If I were a hardcore conspiracy theorist, I would wonder if this was the plan, but I’m not. Sometimes awful things happen by luck and accident. But these monsters have also condemned Ukraine, working splendidly with Putin’s opportunism.
So much damage done by a handful of monsters.
Published in General
I think we could find places for some of these refugees. We could set up quarters for some at Johnston Island, Wake, and Midway. Guantanamo is a large military reservation. We could house some there (not in the prison, but in the rest of the area). I would also be glad to extend hospitality at Palmyra, Howland, Baker, and Jarvis Islands in the Pacific, as well as Navassa Island in the Caribbean.
If they are refugees, looking for safety, these places offer it. If they are looking for a handout, well, they will be more interested in finding some other
suckersponsor nation.Seawriter
I also second this; and it’s worth noting that Claire was quite explicit about immigration not being the only option, so this is quite compatible with what she said.
There are, no doubt, wolves hiding among the sheep. And — as we’ve seen here in Boston — sometimes sheep turn into wolves. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t do something to help people escaping these barbarians.
The Boston Marathon bombers were refugees. Their mother has an arrest warrant out for shoplifting. No thanks!
This might be the most depressing comment thread I’ve ever read on Ricochet.
Should? Says who?
None of these people in the far lands care one whit about me and my family. In fact, many of them wish me ill simply because I am an American. Why should I even care? America needs to take care of all the Americans that are suffering. Let the government act to support the citizens not people in a far land.
And you call yourself “libertarian”?
Because we don’t want to import time bombs, or because people are advocating the government “do something”?
And the ridiculous non-sequitor of the day award goes to…
North Dakota would probably be a good way to winnow the refugees from the migrants.
Because of the stunning lack of compassion exhibited here.
“Where are you sending us? The average temperature in winter is what? I think I prefer ISIS…”
We aim to please.
I don’t understand why we should take even one of these people before Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar or Oman take a passel of them.
Why do we have different countries? To accommodate different people with different cultures. Stop importing these hostile aliens with orthogonal values.
Let me take on both of your responses at once:
No libertarian concept of government I have ever heard of, involves taking tax dollars to import people from another nation to support them on the dole in this one. How, pray, tell is it a non-sequitor to call someone who adopts the title of libertarian on such an idea?
Second, I could have all the compassion in the world, but it does not mean I want my taxes spent to bring a potential terrorist into my city to be the next Boston Bomber. I have compassion for people we Elboa, but I don’t want them in any hospital in my community.
Compassion as a driver for policy is a liberal thing, not a conservative one. I don’t think it is a libertarian one, but then again, there are two of you now for it.
This might be the most assinine comment I’ve ever read on Ricochet.
Ah and here I thought we were better than those countries. Silly me.
That’s a mighty broad brush you have there. Think on it.
Besides the fact that I think the United States has something of a duty to the people we ignominiously left in 2010, I think it’s in the naked selfish national interest of the United States both to kill these butchers (who have it in for us) and to make some effort to save the other people they’re trying to kill. Besides the humanitarian angle, doing so will reduce the need for people to try to immigrate here and I do not believe our immigration policy should be based on charity.
Yes, I do.
I see a lot of compassion exhibited for America and Americans.
Who at Ricochet is arguing this? Links would be demonstrative.
I hear that 100Km outside of Abu Dhabi is nice year round, why not send them there?
Again, I do not support mass immigration by refugees, very likely for the same reasons you don’t.
Nor did Claire — not a libertarian — argue that was the only available solution. She was saying that we should try to help the people who are being victimized by ISIS and presented a number of options.
Links back to posts in this thread that just happened?
Thin, thin gruel.
Jamie, I understand you wish to take in several Syrian or other muslim refugees and write a post about compassion.
If you want to bring these people to the United States this is what will happen.
It happens in Michigan now, and I hear stories about it on a regular basis.
The Federal government has only a couple responsibilities, taking care of citizens that are suffering isn’t one of them. Providing for the Defense and security of the nation is. I think this fits.
I know you don’t subscribe to the magic dirt theory, do you Jamie?
Do you think that if we bring these people in that they’re going to suddenly turn into enlightened westerners because they’re on our dirt as opposed to the dirt they were previously on which has enlightenment-suppressing powers?
No. They’re just going to be Islamists in this country as opposed to somebody else’s. Given the very enlightened attitudes of muslims around the world, I suspect that dirt is probably going to be the least of our concerns.
I have a simple solution that would solve this problem. It does not involve boots on the ground. It is bombing anyplace these people are, and anyone that gives them aid and support. That is how we help in the long run.
Would temporary quarters at Gitmo fill the bill?
Importing people “fits”?
Wow. So paying for the suffering of non-citizens is libertarian, but paying for the suffering of Americans is not libertarian.
One more reason not to be libertarian.
I fully support such a thing and have said so.
I also support doing what we can within the Middle East to help refugees escaping these monsters.
Tom, I admit to being a little dense sometimes, but isn’t Claire explicitly advocating the USA take these people in. Claire is most purposeful in her writing and I doubt she referenced the inscription on the Statue of Liberty inadvertently.