We can trace many of our
country’s problems to the need some citizens have to be perceived by
others as “compassionate,” as “not mean.”
I’m grateful to whoever
passes out personalities that I have no psychological need to be
perceived as “nice.” I hope this has led to my being “smart” —
having common sense, thinking long-term, worrying about unintended
consequences, seeking justice over mercy, and today’s issue, opposed
to the national attempted suicide of inviting more Muslims to the
United States while we are at war with radical Islam.
Where some people may feel
“generous,” I feel my usual “angry” at liberals volunteering to
share our resources — yours and mine — with more welfare recipients
so said generous liberals can feel “good” about themselves, as they
accumulate political power for their power-hungry politicians.
But I was unprepared for
the rage I felt on the eve of 9/11, when I saw news stories about
some U.S. politicians wanting to welcome “emigrants” who come from
countries where radical Islam — which has killed thousands of
Americans on our soil — is tolerated, if not encouraged. There is no
way of vetting the adult males for hatred of America, like that of
the Muslims who, crying “allahu akbar,” used passenger planes as
weapons, or acting as “lone wolves” killed military personnel on our
bases here and, despite being given the benefits of our freedom and
our welfare benefits as the Tsarnaev brothers were, killed and
maimed young Americans at the Boston Marathon.
Can we blame all Muslims
for the behavior of many? No, and I’m not blaming, just using the
only vetting tool possible. We are trying to control illegal
immigration from countries whose governments at least don’t want
“death to America.” We should immediately stop any immigration from
Muslim Middle-Eastern countries.
If Israel wasn’t so
emotionally attached to its biblical real estate, I’d suggest
inviting all Israelis to move here before Iran gets its
now-inevitable nuclear weapon, and let the rest of the Middle East
work out its centuries-old differences without U.S. involvement.
I admit that I once shared
George Bush’s vision of an Iraq that could become a model of freedom
and democracy in the Middle East. No one apparently studied its
tribal politics, fierce ethnicities, and the mess Western
interference had made of its earlier recent forays into this arena,
and realized that we were in way over our heads.
Of course we felt bad
about the horrors Iraqis faced under Saddam Hussein. Just wondering:
What would we have done if half that country had tried to escape to
the West, as Syrians are today? Would it have been easier to just
take them in, before so many of America’s finest died in Iraq?
Follow-up question: What
do we do when some Europeans, their countries overrun with Muslims
who refuse to assimilate, need to run to us? While we’d mourn the
loss of the great European culture, what else can we do if Europeans
don’t find a way to stop their border crisis? Their open borders
have just encouraged more refugees to risk their children’s lives in
rickety boats; how compassionate is that?
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Syrians stream
into Iraq's Kurdistan Region. |
Perhaps the foolishly
national-suicidal Europeans will stay and convert, while others
leave for the U.S. melting pot as they’ve done for more than 300
years. Maybe they’ve learned hard lessons about socialism that they
can use to warn us before we elect one too many Democratic
presidents.
Jews, Christians,
Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, whatever: just no more Muslims. Yes,
this is a prejudice, one that I acquired in September 2001.
People can’t choose their
race or color: They can choose their religion. I grew up in a
German-settled, Catholic town, and wasn’t taught about the Holocaust
until I went to college, where we were required to watch a
documentary about it. I recalled my years of Catholic education in
which I was taught that the Jews killed Jesus, and then found the
anti-Semitic “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” being distributed in
my hometown by a Catholic priest.
Someone more mature might
have checked with other priests I liked, or maybe written a letter
of indignation to the Cardinal. Instead, I left the Catholic Church
and never looked back — though I was pleased when John Paul II
apologized to the Jews for the role it played over the centuries in
encouraging anti-Semitism.
If I had been an American
Muslim watching the Twin Towers collapse and later, Middle-Eastern
Muslims dancing in the streets to celebrate this attack, I would
have removed my hijab and walked away from Islam.
Nothing makes me angrier
than the columnists who try to encourage us all to accept Syrian
migrants by comparing them to the Jews who were trying to escape the
Nazis in Europe. Here is the difference: The Jewish religion has not
attempted to conquer other, non-Jewish countries and slaughter their
inhabitants since somewhere early in the Old Testament; Jewish
refugees were no threat to us. Even the Catholic Church gave up its
dream of international conquest after the Reformation; Pope Francis
hasn’t mentioned it at all.
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20 square
km air-conditioned tent city near Mecca in Saudi Arabia,
used for five days each year by Hajj pilgrims. |
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Last weekend Reuters
reported that Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has called on young
Muslim men in the United States and other Western countries to carry
out attacks inside there and urged greater unity between militants.
“I call on all Muslims who
can harm the countries of the crusader coalition not to hesitate. We
must now focus on moving the war to the heart of the homes and
cities of the crusader West and specifically America,” he said in an
online posting on Sunday.
During the Cold War, I
became attached to the phrase “useful idiots” that referred to naive
Americans who sympathized with Marxism and it socialist ideals; let
me resurrect the phrase to apply to naive Americans who want us to
be “compassionate” and welcome Middle-Eastern refugees from the
current Hot War with radical Islam.
American government’s
primary responsibility is to protect its people. Those who want to
be “nice” can send contributions to relief organizations in the
Middle East.
Or ask your congressman to
contact Saudi Arabia about locating the refugees in a valley near
its holy city of Mecca, where there are 100,000 air-conditioned
tents providing temporary accommodation to 3 million pilgrims during
the five days that Hajj pilgrims use them. Then tell your
congressman to stop the Syrian refugees from coming here instead.
That would be a nice, smart thing to do.
Barbara Anderson of
Marblehead is a weekly columnist for the Salem News and
Eagle-Tribune Publishing Company.
