Syrian Refugees——Yes or No?
The nature of global conflict has totally changed the last 40 years and this change has accelerated the last 15 years. Uniformed armies fighting on battlefields is essentially obsolete now, except for the most primitive of countries. The last war where armies on a battlefield decided anything was probably Korea. Of course we invaded Grenada and Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, against a Government army and these kind of wars were over in an afternoon. And when the dust settled, nothing was settled. Armed religious thugs vied for control over different areas of the defeated country and these conditions still exist. No wars are ever so vicious as religious wars. When God is on some groups side no brutality is too brutal when punishing God’s enemies. Sometimes both sides pray to the same God like Sunni vs Shiite, or Irish Catholics vs Protestant Catholics, or sometimes Church members exercise extreme cruelty on their own church members like Christians burning witches, Muslims stoning adulterers, and before that Christians quartering people alive on the village square. In Africa Muslims enjoy hacking Christians to death and Christians hack Muslims to death, both sides serving their God as intensely as they possibly can. Of course Muslims and Jews have been murdering each other before and after the United Nations carved out a Jewish State in the middle of a Muslim world. That strife has been going on for 60 years now despite Israel teaching them brutal lesson after brutal lesson.
Americans have militarily entered Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia. Lebanon, Afghanistan and several South American countries the past 60 years, and exactly where above are any successes? Let’s just leave Granada out of it. That conflict was just too silly and inane to take seriously. Now we have the newest and most violent war, of recent times, in Syria. It is essentially the ‘Mother’ of all religious conflicts involving Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, and ISIS, mixed in with all kinds of combatants rushing to join in from dozens of other countries, including the U.S. None of these combatants are in uniform. Caught in the middle of this are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions for all I know, innocent people trapped in the cross fire from all the bedlam. Most citizens have been forced to flee, but nobody wants them in their country either.
The truth is, the United States has it’s handful with it’s own soldiers returning from these new kind of wars, needing professional help from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. A soldier on the front line in these kind of wars is under extreme stress round the clock. The enemy could be just about anybody, the land mines could be just about anywhere, snipers could be off in any of the shadowy hidden areas, and suicide bombers or chemical warfare a possibility at any time. The mental consequences of fighting in the middle of this bedlam, or having a family caught up in it, is beyond the pale for many people. In Afghanistan, for the past few years, more American soldiers have committed suicide than have been killed in battle. Why would we want to continue to send troops into these kind of religious conflicts? Obama is to be commended for reducing this sort of thing to a trickle. Let those who want to teach somebody a lesson in the Middle East, or elsewhere, get together and go do it on their own. Stop using our own young people as mercenaries and then doing it on borrowed money.
Why do so many Americans favor sending troops and using our military might to teach all sides a lasting lesson? The answer to this is simple: We no longer have a draft so what personal risk or sacrifice do those wanting America to send in troops risk? I have lived through at least a half dozen invasions by America into these situations and frankly, I never had to make any sacrifice personally at all. When I see surviving veterans of these kind of wars I don’t feel gratitude, but anger that my country actually sends our own young people into wars of this kind. It is personal with me. I vigorously supported the War in Vietnam, excused from the draft because as a graduate student I was deemed too valuable and got a deferment. 35,000 young Americans died for what? The only heroes in that war were the draft dodgers who had the courage to refuse to slaughter distant people for no good reason. Our soldiers were victims too—of our own government. Since that war, all our subsequent invasions, have been fought with borrowed money. My own financial portfolio prospered from all kinds of tax breaks, tax shelters, tax cuts, and just endless federal dollars to make my upper middle class life as financially easy as possible. The most rampant American addiction for wealth becomes 'enough is never enough'.
So here we are again, another religious war going on, again in the Middle East. Most seem to feel we need to teach all of them a lesson they will never forget. This mentality has been tried over and over again for 60 years, with no real victory having ever been achieved. Which of these invaded countries is better off after our invasion than before? Vietnam is, but then that conflict was not religious based. Plus they defeated us, as rightfully they deserved to have defeated us.
With this background we face the decision as to whether we should accept any Syrian refugees into our country. We live more and more in an age of ‘feelings” without quality logic or any proper data base. Few of us have time anymore for any patient study of any serious issues. Modern electronic gadgets have created endless inane babble where everyone, off the top of their head, in endless gadget conversations, expresses how they feel about issues. The depth of much thought today is summed up by ’Somebody Sucks’. If pressed to be more explanatory they often revert immediately to “I don’t want to talk about it further’. This Syrian refugee question is no different. It doesn’t take most people 15 seconds of thought to have an immediate answer as to how they ‘feel’ about this issue.
So, I being human too, start with several feelings. First I really don’t feel anyone should be granted citizenship in this country if they can’t speak English—for their own good. We all know some really nice people in low level jobs who will never get any better job because they can’t speak much English. Hell, a person can learn English through all sorts of head phone tapes and TV courses, etc. They don’t even have to go to class. I also don’t feel any more of our young people should be sent into religious conflicts anywhere. Religious behavior is a personal choice and if people in some country insist using that personal choice as a basis for killing each other or making second class citizens out of others—on what basis do we have a right to tell citizens in other countries what kind of religious behavior they can exhibit, and even if we had such a right how does anyone change someone else’s religious behavior? What percentage of the time does this ever happen? Not very often.
My own ethical basis for my best behavior is based on the simple Principle of the Golden Rule. So was the ethics of Abraham Lincoln and endless other great leaders, including Barack Obama. His popularity often dips when he actually practices that principle, and groups we really feel we don’t like start to get privileges and rights most of us have had for a long time. It is very threatening to us personally that we need share justice with others. “What do you mean set the minimum wage at a living wage level? That means I have to pay more for a hamburger, and a lot of other things.” I guess it is the older people who need to have social security rise with the cost of living so the power of their dollar can keep pace with the cost of living. But the young people? They are just the future, our own offspring—let them work two jobs or live with their parents or get used to having 38 different jobs in their lifetime since more and more jobs go to contract instead of secure full time jobs, where downsizing becomes an annual business tool, where job security gives way to the bottom line pressure to save costs by firing the well paid and hiring a young person at a much lower wage. And if there are not enough jobs available, well, we can just let the overflow become paid mercenaries to go over to the Middle East and teach these people a real lesson.
At any rate there appears to be two legitimate concerns here: First these refugees are legitimate tragedies—innocent people caught up in religious hatred and power hungry thugs. It is unethical to simply turn our backs on people with needs. There is also the question of just how dangerous is it for us to admit 10,000 or 65,000 Syrian refugees? We certainly are not obligated to allow people into this country who will commit acts of terrorism against us. Daily terrorist attacks have become almost a daily occurrence across the globe. Who is committing these terrorist attacks? The answer here is very unnerving. Often they are people with mental or emotional problems. Most of the terrorists actions in our country have been committed by these kind of people. Then we have assassins trained by groups to commit acts of terrorism across the globe. For any logical and rationale decision about Syrian refugees we need to know what percentage of terrorism acts across the globe have been committed by refugees from refugee camps? “According to the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, of the 3 million refugees admitted to the US since 1975 (785,000 since 9/11), roughly a dozen have been arrested or removed due to security concerns.” That really is low. And I am not aware of any terrorist attacks in this country ever having been committed by any of these 750,000 refugees. Why is this not surprising? A family loses their home and all their belongings, is granted entrance into another country and then is going to pull off a terrorist attack as a thank you? That seems almost absurd.
Let’s now get away from feelings and absurdities and be more practical here. The average time wait to process a refugee request for asylum in this country takes a year to 18 months and is often 3 years. So let’s say you are a foreigner and for whatever reason, you want to get into the United States to engage in a terrorist attack. You are going to go and live in a refugee camp for 1-3 years on the ‘chance’ the U.S. might be the country to accept you? Of course not, one thing terrorists rarely have is that kind of patience. There are many others ways to get into any other country faster. Sneak across the border, not withstanding that Carnival barker Trump is going to make Mexico pay for a huge wall across the border. Making anybody do anything is getting harder and harder with modern forms of conflict. It would be more realistic to wonder how many countries in the world would have anything more to do with the U.S. if Trump were President? Of course just the idea of the U.S. taking a sledgehammer and knocking others over the head with it is certainly appealing, even to me. Feelings can often generate stupid ideas. People can marry to get into other countries, they can have a skill needed and be granted some sort of green card immediately, one can attend college in another country, and the list goes on and on. That is the reality. If one wants to get into another country many potential terrorists can. Here is another reality. If some group wants to recruit a terrorist to commit a terrorist act in our country it is probably easier to find a long time American citizen to do it, than fiddling around trying to get somebody from another country to do it.
“So here are some statistics for those interested. Let’s start with Europe. Want to guess what percent of the terrorist attacks there were committed by Muslims over the past five years? Wrong. That is, unless you said less than 2 percent. An FBI study looking at terrorism committed on U.S. soil between 1980 and 2005 found that 94 percent of the terror attacks were committed by non-Muslims. In actuality, 42 percent of terror attacks were carried out by Latino-related groups, followed by 24 percent perpetrated by extreme left-wing actors. And as a 2014 study by University of North Carolina found, since the 9/11 attacks, Muslim-linked terrorism has claimed the lives of 37 Americans. In that same time period, more than 190,000 Americans were murdered (PDF). In fact in 2013, it was actually more likely Americans would be killed by a toddler than a terrorist. In that year, three Americans were killed in the Boston Marathon bombing. How many people did toddlers kill in 2013? Five, all by accidentallyshooting a gun.” Clearly the risk of a Syrian refugee from a refugee camp committing a terrorist attack is extremely remote.
But that doesn’t mean we need admit them willy nilly either. A waiting period is great, even if just to prevent this process from being used by someone wanting to get into our country and commit a terrorist act. After that we need to make the process success oriented. For example, maybe they are conditionally admitted for 1 or two years, and if they don’t learn adequate ability to speak English they are then deported. After all, we want people admitted to succeed not languish dirt poor ostracized from American society as so many now are.
Frankly, we probably need worry more about the 43% of American citizens who do not make enough money to qualify to pay federal income tax. And we need worry more about the 2-5% of Americans who own like 90% of our wealth and still want more. If we can’t find a way to pay all or most American workers a living wage, find a way to protect benefits, pensions, and good health care for everyone, then from this group will arise the next wave of terrorists. In ain’t gonna be the Syrian refugees committing terrorist acts.
And let’s stop listening to idiots. Trump suggests we designate a safe zone in Syria for the refugees. Syria is a small country. There is no place anywhere in Syria today which is a safe zone or will there ever be one till the conflict ends. What we really need in modern American society is for people to stop letting their immediate feelings about issues generate their final opinion. We all start with feelings, but on important issues we need use logic and data to formulate our final opinion. This is hard to do anymore with major issues so complicated, everyone on gadgets to be amused or engaged in endless inane babble—to the point our information overload is mostly junk input. Answers to this problem are elusive. And at some point in modern times we all need to accept that violence breeds violence. We certainly have proved that over the last 60 years.
P.S. Of course I prefer no Syrian refugees living next door to me. Then again, given a choice, I probably prefer about 90% of people not live next door to me. Unfortunately, fair is fair, the Golden Rule is the ethics here, so others too, have to endure having me as a neighbor.
