Kinison and Syria

Just recently some Americans from Bulgaria were warning me about the dangers of Muslim immigrants.

I said:

-If we can survive the Irish, we can survive anything.

They responded.

-You don’t understand. They are violent fundamentalists who want to impose their religion on everyone.

 Sam Kinison was the comic who made the observation that since people were making poor geographical choices, the solution was not to feed them but bring them somewhere else. In the case of the Irish, the British subjected them to a horrific policy of mono-culture, deprivation and abandonment.  The United States did not conduct a military campaign of evacuation, but it came fairly close.  It was a terrific social and economic burden for the United States. But it was far preferable to conducting a military campaign against the British on behalf of the Irish, although the Irish may have preferred that solution.

In Syria we have two million Alawites who most likely want to leave.  The sooner they get out of there the faster the Sunni can get back to killing each other.   Protecting the evacuation and resettling and assimilating them is cheaper and more positive than busting them up and watching them get slaughtered.

More importantly it would be a mature recognition by the American people that our foreign policy has consequences. We helped make this mess. We should help fix it.  If we adopted a general policy of accepting refugees, then we could also start to recognize how our policies create refugees.