It's obscene that the Paris attacks, mostly carried out by people already French or Belgian citizens, are causing a problem for Syrian refugees, who did not do this. The one case where a Syrian passport was found near a suicide bomber (which was cited by TX Gov. Abbott, because of course a person can blow themselves up and their passport survives, and who doesn't take their passport to a suicide bombing?) it was very probably a fake.
And why would anyone do that? Because Daesh wants Westerners to reject Syrian refugees. They want to drive a wedge between people, polarizing them, eliminating the middle. Imagine, for example, what happens when Syrian people are turned away from a place to shelter. They are facing the possibility of returning home to die, because there are a lot of ways to die in Syria right now. They knew, depending upon the length and path of their route that they might be facing death anyway--and that this would be especially hard on children.
So in this great and generous, and some would even claim, Christian nation--what are these elected officials doing? Pretending to send people who are most likely no threat at all, and who are themselves under terrible threat, away from people in their states who they would like to convince they just did a wonderful brave thing for--because they are chickenshits. And they would rather fake leadership by making this basically annoying stand, because the alternative is learning stuff and being decent and showing actual courage and compassion--and who even has time for that?
Because the people who make these mouth noises about how we can't really know who's who? Apparently have no clue that refugee application involves multi-agency inspections and can take 18-24 months to process. The US has only taken about 2000 people to date since 2012, and here's the scorecard on who is actually dangerous to our fellow Americans. Counting 9/11 as basically sui generis, you've got a lot of homegrown horrorshows. And here's my point--toddlers have, in any given year but 2001, killed more Americans than terrorists have. Take, like, any four American school-shooters, and you'd have an event that rivals the Paris attacks. The actual risk of a Syrian refugee actually turning out to be a Daesh operative is seriously low. It's ridiculous to angst over--
And in the meanwhile--think about the generation of Syrian youth who just got the message that we considered them disposable. Is that not radicalizing?
It's chickenshit. It's leading by following uninformed opinion. It's pants-pissing xenophobia and nationalistic signifying.
And Mike Huckabee wants Paul Ryan to step down if he doesn't stop the refugees from slowly dribbling in as they've been doing. And Ted Cruz wants to ensure that Syrian Muslims, specifically, are barred from entry. I can't imagine responses that would make Daesh happier, honestly. They couldn't be playing into what Daesh wants more if they tried. Are they that stupid? That pandering?
And what about the Authorization of Force against ISIL/Daesh Obama requested?
Right. Chickenshit.
4 comments:
Greetings, Vixen. I liked your pumpkins. They are about the color of Les Brigandes (I'm speaking of course of the 3 female cats; 4 if you count my wife, but she's not orange. Don't tell me about feminism, I'm entirely dominated.)
Under the circumstances I think the best thing we can do is pause and develop a much more stringent vetting process, because we have been instructed by the intelligence services that there are in fact a number of ISIS infiltrators that will come in with the rest.
There are already ISIS cells in the US only waiting to be activated. It has been estimated that there are at least a thousand in the cells already.
The way you can think about this is to imagine that the KKK was a European phenomenon. Suppose a huge number of KKK members wanted to migrate to the US. Some were Christians who held their beliefs but rejected violence. Others held their beliefs and sympathized with violence and would support violence but not do it themselves. And the third group of KKK members were immigrating to the US specifically to carry out attacks on American citizens.
In an open society like ours if you just took a hundred men and women, each with two Berettas holding 17-shot clips and a bunch of additional clips for reloading, at a coordinated time they could walk into malls or movies across the US and slaughter thousands. This could be done with weapons that are easily available.
Naturally we would prefer that the KKK members were stringently vetted if in fact a number of Americans simply had to have thousands of KKK members live in the United States.
It has been estimated that there are at least a thousand in the cells already.
By whom?
This is one of those sketchy assertions that have made it to mainstream media, but I don't think any actually sites or dossiers or anything of the sort have basically been nationally presented. I know Maj. Gen. Robert Dees has made this assertion about being infiltrated, as has formed CIA operative Bob Baer. I'm of two minds about this, because of course I am--
If people came from other countries looking to start shit in the US and simply haven't yet--yeah, that's pretty scary and might suggest an immigration/national security loophole that we could tweak policy to correct--I'm on board that this is a real thing.
But you might note that I pointed to school shooters as a comparison for the kinds of mayhem that a handful of randos might commit--
When, as was suggested by a TX congressman just recently, that the proliferation of perfectly legal firearms was ample reason to disallow refugees, I didn't know whether to laugh or sigh. Guns don't kill people--people kill people, although guns makes it a terrifically more efficient enterprise. Of course refugees or even folks who are radicalized on a legitimate visa can procure a firearm and make a lot of terror happen--
And frankly, vis Formerly Amhert's example, I'm amazed that no terrorist to date ever attempted the Harris/Klebold example. I mean, exploding underwear is novel but perverse. I have to wonder what is seriously wrong with the mentality of some dumbfuck who blows half his junk off with a weird James Bond novel idea of how to terror, when an addled youth like Jared Loughner just procures a weapon and pops away doing far more effective damage. Adam Lanza was never going to be a Fortune 500 CEO, but Great Goshalmighty, I'm not sure anyone turned on by Al-Awlaki could have conceived of the ridiculous ease with which kindergarten babies could be mowed down.
The Boston Marathon bombers probably executed the nearest thing to this cheap and simple "just kill and main loads" model. They picked a heavily populated venue and kitted out improvised devices of crude but terrible efficiency. This isn't to praise them so much as to wonder why this particular sort of thing isn't actually done on the regular.
We don't need Syrian refugees to be our terrorist nightmare. Dopey-ass adolescents hit the internet and are too dumb or naïve to understand what critical thinking is, or to mentally deal with propaganda using skepticism. They fall for the fake warrior fairytale Daesh is trying to sell. To my mind, ISIS isn't a nationality or even a religion so much as a state of mind of radicalization to the extent that mass violence becomes not only acceptable, but necessary. Anyone can become ISIS at home. Anyone. THey are no better than little girls killing to appease Slenderman. They also think they serve a bogeyman.
I don't fear Syrian refugees because I know who Timothy McVeigh was. Mass murder isn't anything new here. We do it all the time.
I look at this all as risk assessment. To tell Daesh they don't know us and we will be braver than they know, I will take Syrian refugees. I don't see anything better to do. And the moral comparison is a nice kick to their teeth.
Vicky, you make a lot of good points, and I would agree with your generalized assessment of different kinds of violence that happens in the US.
I think our new speaker is right in calling for more time and more caution. To the best of my knowledge no one is politically trying to insist that refugees should not be allowed in the country. Rather the idea is that we live in precarious times, and this group of refugees offer an exceptional method by which infiltrators could come in with the group. Therefore a very great deal of caution and scrutiny have to be brought to bear lest we let the wolves in with the sheep.
I understand, to my surprise, that Mother Jones has an unexpectedly lucid article with advice to people on the left. As I get it the upshot is that inasmuch as there are legitimate national security concerns expressed throughout the right and middle, and even from some on the left, the left should not act as if being cautious is a bad idea. For the right, the middle, and part of the left, it is simply common sense.
Even if there are only a half a dozen terrorists who come in with the refugees, that is something we would like to forestall. We should simply allow time enough to do all this properly and with a sense of cooperation that removes this from the political sphere. People in politics are constantly getting ahead of their skis and corrupting a situation that really calls for a community of understanding and agreement rather than a desire to win one for the team.
As I consistently assert, Americans are not the enemies of other Americans. We have enemies all over the world, but we spend more time fighting over side issues than addressing whatever might lie within the realm of government to address.
I'm also concerned about a bunch of people who believe in the tenets of shariah. Honor killings, female mutilation, persecution of gays, etc. (in Germany some of their immigrants now walk past German women telling them to put on some clothes – “You can't dress like that anymore.”). But that is a different issue.
It appears to me that the Kali Yuga is moving more rapidly than I previously thought.
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