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Syria … The Real Answer
If we really want to help the Syrian refugees, we should provide a safe place for them to live in their own country. I am reasonably sure that this would be their option of choice if they were indeed fleeing from war and persecution as opposed to being economic refugees.
Disrupting the life and well-being of Americans only creates animosity toward people who under normal circumstances would prefer to stay put.
This, in my estimation, is the best course of action morally and financially. Being the most powerful nation in the world isn’t of much value if our might and influence isn’t put to some good use. We can potentially save a nation and its culture or mindlessly imitate the guilt-ridden Germans by diluting our already problematic culture by creating a new needy underclass in this country.
I believe that the community of nations (not the United Nations) would enthusiastically support an American declaration to establish peace in Syria by force. Would the Russians decide to fight us? Or Iran, or Assad? I don’t think so.
The time has come to put an end to this nonsense. If we have to put a cruise missile into Assad’s bedroom, so be it. We should eliminate ISIS and Assad while we still have the capacity to do so. Then let the serious refugees return home and rebuild their country. Concurrently, all Syrian young men should be assigned to a new military unit designed to liberate their country — refusal to do so would be a pretty good indicator of their real intent.
The message to the rest of the world would be clear. America has had enough. ISIS and other such cancers and their sympathizers may not have lives, but I do and so do most other people in the civilized world. I’m not willing to sacrifice my way of life on the altar of political correctness and bad judgement. I’m willing to invest billions of dollars to rid the earth of this plague and I’m confident that a volunteer force of soldiers, sailors and airmen would be willing to make the supreme sacrifice to clean out these vermin once and for all.
Published in General, Islamist Terrorism
Hear, hear.
But I don’t think the country’s with us on that.
In that vein, I think Aymenn Jawad Al–Tamimi is exactly right, but will sadly be ignored.
I agree with the proposition in the original post.
However, as to arming the rebels, we have tried that route in the past (the Bay of Pigs and the Kurds in 1990), and we have failed.
And if the young men don’t have arms and a rebel army to join, they will be killed or forced to join ISIS.
I forgot to add a line from the movie The Usual Suspects uttered by one of the main characters Roger “Verbal” Kint – “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.”
ISIS doesn’t want to simply live in peace by itself within its own walls. It wants to conquer the Middle East and then the world.
They can’t be contained.
To them, Islam is a political doctrine, not a spiritual belief.
Many people on Ricochet have approved of the idea of establishing safe zones in the region. The problem is almost as many believe that strategy would join a series of half-hearted military campaigns.
It would begin well. But then the objectives would drift and disappear, the rules of engagement would become ridiculous, our politicians would form absurd alliances with minority jihadist groups, progressive media would turn against it, and voters would understandably lose interest in directionless war within one election cycle. And before it was over, some other big event would demand American intervention.
If they want to end the world, we have the power to oblige them. However, it should be their world that ends – not ours. Our president has done everything to embolden these people; one would think it was purposeful or this entire crisis might be the product of total incompetence – either way we are the losers. The American people should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this person to be in the position to ruin so many lives.
Not only is he right, he’s been reading Obama’s talking points for dealing with the Republicans–“ISIS hopes to sow division and discord on the enemies’ home fronts.”
Check.
I’m thinking that there might be general agreement, as per the OP, that the country would get behind a plan to “clean out these vermin once and for all.”
However, who replaces Assad? Remember previous assumptions about large groups of culturally very different people from us, along the lines of ‘every soul yearns for freedom,’ and ‘everybody longs to be like us?’
How’s that working out in places like, say, Iraq? Libya, even?
(Pondering this makes me wonder if perhaps Putin’s strategy, which seems to be to prop Assad up, and perhaps stabilize him in power, might not be at least as viable as any other, and ultimately, one that would result in less mass bloodshed. Not that I’m defending Assad. Or endorsing Putin, for that matter. But I do think that, eventually, he’ll get round to knocking out ISIS, And when he does, he’s not going to bother himself worrying about whether the guys driving the oil tanker trucks for them are civilians or not).
Following a healthy does of United States shock-and-awe, getting rid of ISIS and eliminating Assad, how long do you think before we’d be in that favorite of Democrat party cul-de-sacs, the Syrian quagmire?
Yes, I’d support such a move. But I’d want us to finish the job, whatever, wherever, and whoever, it took. No matter how long. And I’m not sure that we
canwill.Oh, dear.
What we would have to do is go into Syria with a very large force and be prepared to stay there for a long time. Decades, perhaps. And our goal should be to keep order and protect life and property. Not to create New Hampshire, just to keep people from killing each other. The Syrians themselves have to figure out what sort of government, economy and tax-structure they want to have. No pack of nerds in a Green Zone trying to design a stock exchange while people are being blown up outside the wall—the Syrians can make their own stock exchange,traffic laws, decisions about handicapped access to public buildings etc. etc, we just have to be extremely firm about the no-killing, no rioting, no bombing, no raping, no flinging people off roofs, no trashing historic sites.
This will be very hard to do. If we do it well, it will be exciting for a little while, and merely boring for a long, long time. Like occupying Germany for decades, only with an unpleasant climate and no amenities.
On the other hand, our Males (and Females) of Military Age clearly have time on their hands…
Why can’t we put some economic pressure on one of the richest countries in the world- Saudi Arabia- to get their hands dirty and deal with this? They don’t own a monopoly on the world’s oil supply any longer so why don’t we threaten them with sanctions?
There, there.
Most Say ‘No’ to Syrian Refugees In Their State
Regards,
Jim
It is crucial that the policy adopted is conceived, as Joseph says, with the aim that “serious refugees return home and rebuild their country”. Whether they are temporarily housed for now in the camps in the surrounding region and perhaps later on in protected enclaves in Syria itself, the aim should not be the re-settlement of refugees in the West but rather the eventual peaceful return of Syrians to their cities and towns once the civil war ends (however that is achieved). This satisfies today’s humanitarian needs and tomorrow’s nation rebuilding. It also stops the bad habit of imagining refugees as a new mass of ‘clients-in-waiting’ for the welfare state whether in Sweden or Michigan. It also removes the temptation of the clumsy administrative state to want to staff ever-proliferating agencies that screen, document, interview, fingerprint, database match and bio-metricize the terrorized, desperate, displaced and abused. It is enough to protect, house in temporary camps, and work eventually to return the dislodged Syrians to the homeland from which they have had to flee.
It isn’t either political or spiritual. It’s both. No sphere of life outside the realm of religious doctrine, nothing outside the authority of the caliph acting under Shariah.
Totally totalitarian.
You mean like last time? First we fix the Obama electorate problem.