[Ed Shacklee]

Originally Posted by Andrew Frisardi

Scapegoating is a tried-and-true chicken sh#@ way to score political points. And all this over only 10,000 refugees, in a country as big as the United States. Pathetic.

How excellent would it be if America offered to take in a million or so - still just a drop in our bucket - and explained we were trying to make up somewhat for how wrong-headed we were when we denied entrance to Jews fleeing central Europe before WWII?

That's the sort of big dream I'd like to see dreamed.

Ed

[Pedro Poitevin]

Why are so many people simultaneously risk-averse about taking in refugees and/or immigrants, and at the same time so darn reflexively hawkish about sending troops to other countries? Doing the former is certainly no riskier than doing the latter, but the former is morally virtuous and the latter is morally suspect. One would hope that people would be risk-averse when it comes to their own moral standing: that they would be more worried about making the historically unforgivable decision of denying refuge to the persecuted, and less worried about exercising (virtuous) military self-restraint.

Pedro.

[Roger Slater]

Pedro, I don't think people here are actually risk-averse to taking in refugees at all. I think it's just a pretext for not wanting more immigrants who are not white Christians. The same way Trump has his followers believing that most Mexican immigrants are drug lords and rapists, that crowd is ready to believe that refugees fleeing terrorism are themselves terrorists. It doesn't matter that we've had 750K refugees since 9/11 and none of them have turned out to be terrorists. Too many have turned out not to be evangelical Christians.

[John Whitworth]

I think I see a solution. Americans want more refugees and Brits want less. Therefore... How many do you want? Our muslim population is five times yours so it's only fair.

[Roger Slater]

Fair? What does fairness have to do with it? Are you more of a British citizen because you are Christian than you would be if you were Muslim? Perhaps the Muslims don't think it's fair that you're there, which would be a horrible thing for them to think but only on the same order as what you seem to be saying.

[John Whitworth]

Roger, you can have all the moral high ground you want. When are you taking a Syrian family into your house?

[Roger Slater]

Don't be silly, John . . . though it seems "silly" is your only form of argument. My last comment to you responded to your cavalier reference to your fellow British citizens as a burden that it is unfair for the likes of you to have to shoulder, a comment which makes it clear that you regard some of your fellow Muslim citizens as second class undesirables. For you to "refute" my observation by suggesting that I'm advocating the quartering of refugees in people's private homes is rather beyond the nonsensical blather even of Donald Trump. In all these discussions, it seems you never address arguments or give reasons or respond to what's been said, but you engage in glib evasions, often coming up with a new bit of unsupportable and silly nonsense to distract attention from your last bit after it's been conclusively refuted. Donald Trump, at least, seems to be doing this consciously, as a cynical political maneuver, but I fear that you are simply oblivious to the way you confuse glib rejoinders for actual discourse.

[Norman Ball]

The Obama speech. Rank naivete or rank cynicism? Both?

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to escape the ravages of our CIA regime-change assets."

Lady Liberty has become a self-feeding oroborus. Her head's now parked squarely up her robes. I don't even think it's concerted deception anymore. The Noble Liars have simply lost their cheat sheets. The only thing beyond good and evil is more evil. Every seven-year-old learns that in Sunday School, but that's the white Christian in me talking. Some go on to become clever fools and digest Plato, Nietzsche and Leo Strauss. So, once they feel we're up to the task, they're going to call off global totalitarianism, collapse the panopticon and unleash an era of universal self-determination?? Is that really the party line?? Deep deep down, absolute power has a benign soft middle just dying to get out. Who but a bunch of poets would believe that?

But yes, regular Americans need to come to terms with their very busy covert side. A good place to start is the new book out by Salon founder David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard, on the (arguably psychopathic) Allen Dulles and his decades of international mischief. He's as close as you'll get to a Typhoid Mary for mayhem in the post-WW2 era. Who would guess from today's headlines, for example, that Iran was the second Muslim-majority nation (behind Turkey) to recognize the State of Israel? Unfortunately, Iran was disabused of Western goodwill in large part by Dulles' CIA's assassination of democratically-elected Mossadegh in '53. We suffer the effects of that crime even today.

Let's also not forget that the modern activated form of jihadism was invented by America, or certainly minted in our name, by one Polish refugee Zbigniew Brzezinski via the Afghan Mujahideen in 1979. This nihilistic abberant form of Islam needn't have been weaponized. Indeed it might have lain dormant forever as a vestige of a bygone barbarous age. But there was a Soviet Empire to defeat. The Saudis are compounding this error by bankrolling jihadists whose ultimate prize (after Damascus) is, let's face it, Mecca.

Evil seems to have a 'sorcerer's apprentice' complex. While it condescends to human direction for an early foothold, it ultimately detests being wielded and strives to become its own master. That would be global jihadism. The genie is out of the bottle. Humanity's about to learn you can't steer an abyss. Those who think they site astride it are victims of hubris. It'll just eat them last.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Now that France has inaugurated the EU mutual defense clause (rather than the Nato ditto) and is coordinating with Russia who has finally admitted yes, there was a bomb just as Mr. Obama said several days ago, and now that the US and Turkey are also working together, the script is being rewritten.

I can't help being reminded of how the blitzkrieg changed when Hitler opened a second front in WW II and blithely marched his troops off in the direction of Moscow. It didn't happen at once, but it happened, a bite too big to chew, that was the turning point. (Clarification. In re-reading this I see that it is not clear that I meant that ISIS has bit off more than it can chew by attacking Turkey, Russia and France in a short period of time.)

I am also reminded of all the photos of those young men frozen in the snow outside Stalingrad. They too were indoctrinated by a decade of membership in Hitler Youth. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/440930619743865225/

History does repeat itself. General Sherman said it: War is hell.

You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it … Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.

Comments to Prof. David F. Boyd at the Louisiana State Seminary (24 December 1860), as quoted in The Civil War : A Book of Quotations (2004) by Robert Blaisdell. Also quoted in The Civil War: A Narrative (1986) by Shelby Foote, p. 58.

It will get worse, much worse, before it gets better. And many innocent people will die.

Cross-posted with the above rant.

[Quincy Lehr]

The humane impulse toward this situation might pose to the thoughtful liberal the question of why the Syrian refugee crisis must be solved now (with which I concur), yet universal health care can be thrown under the bus again and again, and a candidate who vociferously backed the utter catastrophe of a war that played a crucial role in setting these events in motion (Hillary Clinton) still has a f#%king political career. Questions of "multiculturalism" versus assimilation also remain relevant--until recently, I lived near the Hasidic part of Williamsburg, where such questions are posed rather concretely and with a non-Muslim population.

However, John's blustery response to Rogerbob is the worst kind of demagoguery. I'm unlikely to take a Syrian into my house for the same reason as I'm unlikely to provide insurance for the uninsured. I, as a private citizen in a country with incredible income inequality, am not particularly well-equipped to do so, even compared to as self-evidently unjust a government as the American state. Private voluntarism is not the solution to a social problem.