President Obama insists that the slaughter in Paris by Muslim terrorists, at least one of which was a refugee from Syria, will not deter him from bringing 10,000 Syrian refugees into this country each year for the next several years.
It's strange that some of the same people in this country who demand that climate change skeptics be jailed, and who have nothing but hatred for Christians who doubt evolution and oppose gay marriage, are all in favor of bringing 10,000 people, many of whom would abolish science and hang gays, into our communities.
Those who think this is a bad idea, especially in light of the experience of France which has seen hundreds, if not thousands, of Jews emigrate from the country because of violent Muslim antisemitism, are called bigots. They're lectured about how most Muslims are good people and only a small percentage of them are radical sociopaths. Of course, it's also true that most Germans were good people during WWII, but the few who had the power were sociopaths and we should reflect upon the damage those few inflicted upon the world.
Suppose only 1% of the 10,000 or so the president wants to bring in are terrorists or potential terrorists. If so, we would be bringing into the country every year 100 people, or ten cells like the one which wreaked such carnage last Friday night on Paris. Do we really think that's compassionate and wise? Are the families of the Paris dead glad today that their country was so compassionate as to let in so many people who hate the French and all that France stands for?
The desire to be compassionate doesn't mean we should be stupid. If there was any chance at all that a blood transfusion you needed contained a few bits of HIV would you let that blood into your body if you had an alternative?
The administration scoffs at these concerns and assures us that the refugees will be "vetted", but how? There are no records in Syria that we can check to see if these people are innocent victims or ISIS operatives. All we have to go by is their word that they have no terrorist sympathies. The claim that we'll be vetting them is simply absurd.
So what should be done? We should do two things: First, demand that temporary refugee camps be set up in Saudi Arabia, southern Iraq, and other Arab countries, paid for by the oil-rich Arabs who should be shamed, if need be, into showing some compassion for their Muslim brothers and sisters. Second, we, together with European and Arab allies, should purge Syria of the elements whose terror has set this refugee crisis in motion in the first place so that these people can return to their homes. That purgation would include not only ISIS but Assad. This may bring us into conflict with the Russians and the Iranians, and it would have been less dangerous had this been done a year ago, but as long as they're there supporting Assad the suffering of the Syrian people won't improve.
Unfortunately, President Obama doesn't seem inclined to take either of these measures. I hope I'm not being unfair to him but he doesn't seem interested in actually leading. Instead, we bide our time, dropping a few bombs here and there (parenthetical question: France retaliated against ISIS yesterday by bombing a training camp, communications center, and munitions dump. Why, after all the bombs we've supposedly dropped on ISIS over the last year, was this target still available to the French? Why wasn't it destroyed long ago?) until ISIS makes good on its threat to attack Washington, D.C.