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Dear Governors Who Oppose Syrian Refugee Resettlement
I applaud you in your eagerness to keep our homeland safe from terrorism. Believe me, I don’t take the threat of terrorism lightly. I don’t want to pull this card too often — I know it gets old — but my cozy Paris neighborhood was turned into a river of blood the other day. I’m dusting off the escape plans, thinking maybe it would be prudent to buy myself a bit of atropine, 2-PAM and diazepam to have on hand at home, a Hazmat suit, that sort of thing. And I only I mention this to you just so you know I take this threat every bit as seriously as you do. Unfortunately, I suspect, I take it quite a bit more seriously, because it’s obvious to me that you’ve not given this even five minutes’ of serious thought.
Here’s why I think so. Have a close look:
Do you see the problem I see?
Now, Syrian refugees are, at least in principle, subjected to a layer of screening that includes in-person interviews with staff trained to elicit testimony. Whether these trained staff are any good at it, I don’t know, and I doubt it a priori, but at least they’re thinking about the possibility that these people might not be who they say they are. After that, they refer only the most vulnerable and the least dangerous — survivors of torture and rape, for example, or families with multiple children and a female head of household — for resettlement. Then the applications have to be reviewed and approved by State, Defense, Homeland Security, and the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, as well as a bunch of agencies we probably don’t even know about; and then, supposedly, a DHS officer gets in on the act and interviews every applicant, too; they collect fingerprints, they scan eyeballs, they match them against databases at the National Counterterrorism Center, the Pentagon, domestic and international law enforcement, the FBI, NSA, and Interpol — and then they turn most of them away. Supposedly, half the refugees admitted are children. A quarter are adults over 60. Only two percent are single males of combat age, and I’d be pretty surprised if they weren’t cripples incapable of feeding themselves unaided, no less committing terrorism. After that, they’re followed up by a lot of vetted, Christian non-profits whose goal is to help them integrate, so basically they’re under semi-permanent surveillance, and the chances of their getting enough private time to plot a terrorist abomination sound, to me, reasonably slim.
But not impossible.
For you see, I’m completely with you in saying that we can’t and shouldn’t trust any of those agencies, given that they screw up everything they touch. It’s like they’ve got some kind of anti-Midas magic, isn’t it? And above all, I have to agree on the most basic of principles: Our policy, as Americans, should be to take no risk, ever. There is nothing so important that it’s worth taking a risk. Certainly not, say, saving someone’s life. That much is trivially obvious, as Chomsky would say.
So I’m with you 100 percent on the principle — no risk, ever — but I’ll know that you’re serious about this philosophy, as opposed to just being disgusting demagogues trying to exploit the plight of the most miserable victims of war in the world, when you shut down the Belgian pipeline. Because it sure looks to me as if the most despicable terrorists whose handiwork I’ve ever had the personal displeasure of coming across are Belgian and French nationals, not Syrians. And as you can see from the above, Europeans can just skip all of this vetting nonsense, book a ticket on Priceline, hail a cab to Brussel-Nationaal, and fourteen hours later walk out of customs into the sunlit tarmac of Dallas/Fort Worth International. No questions asked.
Given that on average, it takes a Syrian refugee 18-24 months get into the US (clearly, someone is cogitating deeply over those files, for better or worse) why isn’t that exactly the strategy any terrorist EU National who wasn’t clinically feeble-minded would adopt? I mean, haven’t you noticed that these scum are in a hurry to kill us? They don’t have the time to wait for our bureaucratic Behemoth to go through its creaking paces.
Think about it. Try to imagine you’re a terrorist. Don’t get all worked up about the tafsir part of it, just think about it like a video game: His goal (or hers, lots of she-jihadis these days) is to kill as many of us as possible in the most cost effective, time-saving, and maximally terrorising way. Now, we know these guys with the iris scanners and the notebooks and the scary-looking interrogators from State, Defense, Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA, the DHS, the Pentagon and the NSA are all a total joke who couldn’t spot a terrorist if it bit ’em in the rump. After all, it’s not like anyone in any of those agencies has ever spent years in these parts of the world sincerely trying to avoid getting his own posterior blown up by jihadi psychopaths, so why would they know anything about that?
But let’s let their total incompetence be our little secret, for now. See, I figure to an ISIS fanboy it could actually sound quite daunting, not to mention seriously hectic, to deal with all those agencies and their obnoxious, repetitive, intrusive, personal, and insulting questions — especially when the alternative is so supremely easy: You just book your flight, hop across the pond, and if anyone asks, you tell them you’ve always heard that Zee Burning Man, he is so cool, dude and I go to to hook up wid deez crazy girls who bring zee Axayacoatl to life! — and you’re home free! You don’t even need to bring your own Kalashnikov — we’ve got much better stuff for sale at any Walmart, and it’s way cheaper than those rusty ancient-model Russian rejects you’d have to buy from some Balkan gonif who’s probably going to sell you the only AK in the recorded history of warfare that’s ever jammed.
So prove to me you’re serious about keeping us safe, governors. And I mean 100 percent safe: No risk, ever. Not for any cause, however worthy. Show me you’re serious by getting that Belgian terrorist pipeline shut down. If one more Belgian gets into the US without the same treatment we give the Syrians, it’s on you if he blows himself and everyone around him up on prime time during a football game. Because that’s just the obvious thing to do, isn’t it? He doesn’t have to hang out for even a second with all those sad-faced, depressing, exhausted refugees — some of whom might even know who he is and start shrieking in horror, right in front of the local CIA vetter, you know? You just skip all that risky, time-consuming nonsense and hop right on the plane.
You know I’m right, Governors.
No need to thank me. It’s just what any patriotic American would do.
Published in General, Islamist Terrorism
Clarie,
This entire post is beneath you. It is along the lines of “But what about Timothy Mcvey?”
Just because a solution is not perfect does not mean you do not do it.
I get that you want to do something, but frankly, you sound more and more leftists with each of these posts.
We owe nothing to Syrians.
When Belgians murder 3,000 Americans in the name of a false pagan deity, let me know.
Dear Ms. Berlinski:
I think you should be aware that Fred Cole has found a way to post under your name.
And I’ll take any of those governors over the Islamist-sympathizing Marxist currently occupying the White House.
What’s being done for Syrian Christians?
Here’s the thing: Governors actually do think about their jobs, even when you disagree with them. And just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they’re disgusting demagogues. That’s actually an incredibly insulting thing to suggest. For instance, I disagree with you about this. That’s ok. It doesn’t mean you’re…whatever. I just, really, really, disagree with you about Syrian “refugees.”
You may mock the governors, but they have legitimate concerns, which are shared by a majority of Americans.
Their concerns are legitimate because the mastermind of the Paris attacks re-entered Europe posing as a Syrian refugee, even though he was…a Belgian national.
So your theory is basically…what?
There is an important difference between “no risk ever” and “an easily avoidable risk.”
But I’m with you. Let keep all Belgians from entering the US. They scare me. Nomads you know. Smell like cabbage. Small hands.
How dare you suggest a relgious test! Don’t you know that all faiths are equal and that no faith is better than another???!!! Islam is a religion of peace and the fact Muslims do things like execute homosexuals, cut off hands of thieves, is just a minority of extremists in places like Saudia Arabia.
They got one last week. And 188 Frenchmen. It seems a significant warning sign.
Oh, that’s right. Nothing.
I can see that visa waivers make us vulnerable. I don’t see why you would address governors of states. That’s like asking the governors to declare war on ISIS.
Claire clearly thinks we are all wrong. She has the right to have a superior view, since she might have died! That gives her feelings more weight than ours, doesn’t it?
How much vetting did Major Nidal Hasan receive?
Precisely why all Muslim immigration to the West should have ended the day after 9/11, and those living in the West either expelled or compelled to renounce their barbarous creed.
Hardly a true Belgian. You are right Claire, we should introduce both religious and ethic tests to keep people out.
Let’s stop dancing around the problem: Islam. Islam is the problem. Muslims are the most dangerous people in the world right now. That is the fact of the matter. We need to let none of them into America. The West should stop letting them travel freely.
OMG, what have I said? I am painting with too broad a brush! Yet, that is how I feel, and how I feel is at least as important as how you feel, of is your brush with terror something that trumps me?
You monster! How dare you! Bigot! Racist! Imperailaist!
Being Cynical and Skeptical means we are all racists, right?
Dear Governors,
Although the American most responsible for the Syrian problem is President Barack Obama – as illustrated by the inestimable Walter Russell Mead,
and although our very own Claire agrees with the President in his moral preening; I urge you to stay the course.
Europe already has a well developed welfare state and rather than impose transportation and housing costs upon the already beleagured American taxpayer (burdened, as it were with nearly 50 years as the world’s policeman) it is perhaps fitting that the vaunted democratic socialism of Europe take this tiny additional burden. They could use these refugees to prop up their aging workforce, harvest their labor to improve their social safety nets and ensure the dependency of future generations.
America is the world’s policeman, perhaps Europe should rise to their true calling as the world’s nanny (they already have the environmental scold part down and I would hate burden their conscience with the unneccessary expenditure of carbon to effect the transfer of the refugees) – consider it a way to pay forward the fruits of the Marshall Plan.
Europe can handle this.
Stew
As the only thing a U.S. screener is likely to catch is cold, let’s just dispense with that fig leaf for the modesty of national security and let them all in.
We can register them to vote while we’re at it.
So what’s the rule when the editors start trolling all the members of the site?
If your case were so compelling, Claire, you wouldn’t need to to resort to patronizing caricature and snark. Really, we don’t need any more of our betters sneering and mocking our concerns. We get enough of that from our president.
Heh
Only Nigel Farage can say “former Prime Minister of Belgium” and make it sound like a count on an indictment.
“Blame Belgium, Blame Belgium,
It’s not a real country anyway”
I’ll treat my Ricochet membership fee as a jizya Islam tax from here on in.
I don’t think living in a city that undergoes a terrible assault gives one the right to take a superior stance: “Let me explain it to you awful demagogues, and I’ll map it out really slowly, because you seem to be stupid or maybe just morally defective.” The proximity to last Friday’s assault might explain the emotional intensity of Claire’s post. Understandable. But I lived through 9/11 in NYC; that did not make me an expert on national-security issues; that did not make it okay (or smart) to call my ideological opponents stupid.
Yeah, maybe we should invade
I wonder about those counts. Last month my church collected furniture and household goods for two families of Syrians that were resettled in our fair city. All Yazidi’s, eight total.