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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
That would be Western/Eastern European immigrants to whom you’re referring.
Thanks, Claire. Great note.
Yes, but it has to be there. We have to find a way to create safe spaces there. That requires seriousness. Bringing them here is the same lack of seriousness that has driven our policy toward that part of the world. It won’t change anything, but it may bring some of the problems here. That isn’t serious.
Spare me.
Cultures are different. That’s why we have different countries. Europeans settled North America. More Europeans, those huddled masses of Emma Lazarus, fit in with their fellows of the same culture.
An important lesson from history:
widely divergent cultures+proximity=war
Im sympathetic to taking in refugees from Christians, kurdish yazidi backgrounds Claire but my heart and head is and has gone very cold to Muslims. They just wont integrate and a significant minority will be a problem.
I doubt Im in the minority here either.
Those that answered the call inscribed on the Statue of Liberty came here to be Americans.
The refugees (a term exclusively reserved for women and children) are not coming here to shed their burkhas, sharia, language, honor killings, etc. They are simply moving their problems and culture which is incompatible with western Judaeo Christian values to our shores because of the barbarism inherent in their religion and culture.
Yes, give us your tired, your poor that yearn to speak English and honor all that is great about America and our values. Otherwise, take up arms and fix your own problems at your home.
You are not alone.
I really hate to say this, but I live in America, and you don’t. I don’t want any of these Muslim refugees to come here. Christian? Yes. Muslim? Hell no . . .
How many times can I like this?
Never.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=T1Get5aG1sM
No, I don’t think I agree with this at all.
But I do think we should be taking some action to help those refugees – what sincere ones there are among them – no longer have to flee. So, I’ll vote for stronger foreign policy and an end to the welfare state. But not the importation of middle east problems into the United States.
Claire I feel for your pleas of compassion here. ISIL has affected many innocents in Syria and Iraq and in much of North Africa. I suggest we start by taking in the Christians first, which would likely prove to be a fairly sizable chunk of the refugees. Then start from there.
now I agree
I’d be open to bringing them here, but not into our cities. The US government owns 84% of Nevada. Build a refuge for them there, maybe halfway between Carlin and Eureka, providing food, basic shelter, schools and security — and keep them 100 miles away from the nearest city. Keep them safe until circumstances in their home countries change, and then send them back.
My suspicion is that once they’re in our cities, the worst of them will fade into the shadows, and the best of them, as Paddy suggests, won’t integrate into American society. If there is still such a thing.
No you are not alone at all.
I know that Breitbart is not looked at too kindly here on Ricochet, but this story is pretty much the reason for the NO to taking any of these Muslim refugees.
Fifty percent of the ones here now want Sharia law, so importing more is not a good idea.
Also, I think this is an extremely important point. You’re making the same mistake that open-borders folks make when they start talking about how America was built by immigrants. It’s not the same people. Poor and huddled masses were folks who wanted what America stood for and who came here – not even to assimilate, but because this is where they most fit in! That is most emphatically not the case with these Muslim countries. I’m not an expert in middle-east cultures, but it strikes me as somewhat analogous to warring tribes – I don’t imagine that many of the “refugees” would gladly accept the exact same scenario if their side was in power. That’s a problem. It isn’t as if you have peaceful victims fleeing oppressors. You seem to have losers fleeing from winners – and if the shoe was on the other foot, it may not look any different. I’m not even sure that we can take sides in battles like that. Only try to keep it contained.
Sorry, Claire, I think I understand your sympathy, but there are limits that we should have recognized long ago. The comments above are correct. We cannot risk receiving those a small but unidentified number of whom will wreak havoc in our country. Wanting it to be different will not make it different. They are who they are, and until they become civilized, our greater sympathy will have to be expended on our own.
If we could screen the population such that 99.5% were not ISIS, that would leave fifty very bad people entering the country. We have roughly five times the population of France, so we ought to be able to absorb five times the damage. 645 dead, 1,750+ wounded. Will that be one time only, do you suppose, or should we pencil it in as an annual thing?
I’m not insensitive to the predicament thes people face. I just remain unconvinced that bringing them over is the best way to deal with it.
Taking in refugees from this far away would be sheer insanity. Being a refugee is a temporary condition (one to two years) in a country bordering the conflict you are escaping. It is not a ticket to the most advanced economy 6,000 miles away.
It would be a lot cheaper to help them weather the crisis in bordering countries until they can go back home.
Even the peaceful refugees aren’t “coming to America,” they’re fleeing Trashcanistan or whatever other third world hellhole they’re escaping. As soon as they get here, they want to turn wherever they’ve landed into New Trashcanistan (kind of like people who flee Chicago because of the corruption but continue voting Democratic). As soon as they get to 10% of the population they begin wanting a separate society based on Sharia law, and they bring charming customs like honor killing and FGM with them.
Women and Children, no boys over the age of 10 or ones that are clearly starting puberty. They must forswear Shiaria, agree to live by our rules from day one, learn English within the year, and break not one law. And they agree to all communications being monitored, and they are subject to summary expulsion at the whim of the US, with no recourse the US courts to avoid it. Put this into an amendment and pass it so that SCOTUS cannot overturn it.
Then, and only then, will I be for letting anyone in. These people are not yearning to be free. They are yearning to impose their way of life on others, to support those that do.
If the men are so upset, they can damn well pick up a gun a fight the bad guys in their nation. THey won’t. In fact, the moment the US leaves, they all give up. They are losers from a loser culture that history has passed by.
There is no lack of land, wealth, and ingenuity in their region to house them in like cultures.
We are being played the fool.
We could always offer temporary quarters for refugees at Guantanamo.
There are more than enough resources within their time zone to address the situation.
I hear 100 miles outside of Minot, ND is nice this time of year.
Seriously. Build an internment camp there and keep them there until the crisis in their home country has subsided. Then send them home.
The terrorists well understand our dilemma and will do everything they can to exploit it. I well remember the British imam after 9/11 boasting that Islam will change America and Britain: Either we will modify our liberty or our liberty will be used to defeat us. Either way, they win.
Does it make sense to let in refugees without some assurance of their peacefulness and desire to either assimilate or return to their homeland? No.
The first thing we must do is not admit young men of fighting age. This is their time to fight for their homeland. But they will be turned into cannon fodder unless there is a way to organize, train and lead them.
Women with children OK. It’s still a risk, but less so if the men are not about to support or pressure them into acts of terror.
As has been written about it would be far cheaper for the American taxpayer to support them financially in some other locale than to simply integrate them into our health and welfare systems.
Basil,
A thought I dared not speak. It’s now empty. Make it the new Ellis Island. Thank you
Sam
Yes. But that wouldn’t feed our narcissism.