Derek Scarlino: Beyond Utica, the United States has admitted 750,000 refugees since 9/11. Not one stands convicted of committing terrorism. In 2014, the US admitted 19,651 refugees from Iraq and 758 refugees from Afghanistan. These are not places where the US has been supposedly fighting terrorism? What logic leads one to suddenly decide that Syrian refugees are not to be allowed? Of the 400 Syrian refugees admitted in 2014, where has there been an act of terrorism attributed to them on US soil? That Hanna laughably joins a circus which is demanding increased scrutiny for asylum seekers is all the more apparent when considering that refugees go through 18 months of screening already. Perhaps if the Paris attacks got the publicity that similar events in Beirut and Nigeria got, there’d be no outrage to speak of.
So where’s the fire? It’s rooted in a pitifully shallow understanding of events which continue to unravel the fabric of the Middle East. The epistemic black hole that is the American conscience rears its head once again. Events decades in the making, starting with the uprooting of the Palestininian people in 1948 and the CIA-led overthrow of the Iranian democracy just a few years later in 1953, being decided on with born-yesterday hindsight.
There have been reactions to the attacks in Paris, and the looming refugee crisis, that have shown true courage, like the rallies in Europe that overwhelmed and chased away anti-refugee demonstrations to instead convey a message of peace and acceptance. Open arms, not for monsters, but for the people originally fleeing the monsters. A reality lost on many. More here.