It’s a question that has divided our nation. It has become a
kind of litmus test that determines whether your concern for the welfare of
your fellow human beings out ranks your concern for the welfare of your state
and nation.
Our President describes the refugees as women and their
three year old children. Surely providing shelter for women and children is a
work of charity with universal appeal.
The Governors who would deny refuge see it differently. Many
are concerned that refugees are not fully or properly ‘vetted’ meaning that we
don’t know enough about them to be confident that they come in peace.
Surely no one wants to welcome thousands of potential
Islamic terrorists to our homeland. Some spokesmen for the administration have insisted
that we have a ‘robust’ system of vetting, that we can be confident that the
refugees come to our shores in peace and brotherhood.
At the same time there are other voices, some quite
knowledgeable, who insist that the vetting process is inadequate and deeply
flawed. They are saying that we simply do not have reliable background
information on most refugees, and we do not have the manpower or resources in
place to investigate every person who knocks on our door.
Whether all of the refugees are, as described on the statue
of Liberty, “wretched homeless refuse yearning to breathe free” or whether
indeed some of them are fanatic Jihad enemies of freedom and democracy is a
question we ought to address before we undertake to offer wholesale asylum.
I recently wrote a blog in which I insisted that Syria should
be a Syrian problem; that Syrian territory belongs to and should be governed by
the indigenous population.
Preparing this blog, I went on Google and asked to see
pictures of the Syrian refugees. Google obliged with pages and pages of
pictures. To my utter surprise, I discovered that the mass of people
known as Syrian Refugees are at least fifty percent males. Military aged males.
Young men who, in our country, would automatically be included in what our
Constitution calls ‘the militia.’
They are the people who would be drafted to fight for the
homeland. They are the able bodied males who are expected to step up and fight
to protect their homes, their wives, their children, their families.
Why are they leaving Syria? Aren’t they Syrians? Why won’t
they stand and fight for their homes?
Why are 19 and 20 year old men seeking refuge in Europe and
the United States when their ancient motherland is in turmoil?
And while we are asking questions, here is another: why aren’t
the Persian Gulf States of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qator and Bahrain taking in
any Syrian refugees? They have a lot more in common with Syrians then
Frenchmen, Germans or Americans do. And they are a lot closer.
All of which leads me to offer this suggestion to the
several America Governors who are resisting the influx of Syrian refugees: why
not simply declare that no able bodied adult males will be welcomed? That is a
form of vetting which is easy to enforce, and should go a very long way to
comfort those citizens who are concerned about the Trojan Horse syndrome.
When Bush 43 was told of the attack on the World Trade
Center, his immediate reaction was “We are at war.” France’s President Hollande
came to the same conclusion after the November 13 attack on Paris. The problem
in both cases is defining just who we are at war against.
I should think that a formal declaration of war would define
the enemy, and what the object of the war will be. If, as seems to be the case,
the enemy is radical Islamic terrorists, (RITS?) what is the goal? How do we
define winning? Are we bent on killing all the RITS? Or are we merely intent on
punishing those who attack us?
No Christian nation will knowingly adopt genocide as a
public policy. The question is, how do you fight an ideology?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.