Syrian Refugees (squirrel)

Ten days ago I never saw the slightest sign that anyone I know cared in the least about Syrian refugees. Now I've lost count of the number of posts I've seen on Facebook about them.

The big change is, of course, the slaughter of French innocents by ISIS-backed terrorists, one of whom seems to have been a Syrian refugee. While it's true that conservatives have called for the US to stop accepting these refugees, I really thing that the response from the left is disproportionate given their lack of prior interest. After all, I don't see any calls for President Obama to do more to end the horrible Syrian civil war. Syria has had a refugee crisis for years and conservatives have been the only ones who seemed to even notice.

There are several things that could be done. Most of these involve opposing Syrian President Bashar al0assad. Had Obama enforced his red line against Bashar using chemical weapons then the crisis might not even exist today. Basar continues to use chlorine gas and barrel bombs against the civilian populace. He has created more refugees than ISIS.

So why haven't we enforced some no-fly zones or armed some of the rebels who want to fight both Bashar and ISIS? Because President Obama is counting on the nuclear proliferation treaty with Iran to be his foreign relations legacy and Iran has threatened to pull out if we do anything against their puppet, Bashar.

So, instead of examining the causes of the refugee crisis, we have a bunch of liberals who found a way to make it sound like everything is the Right's fault. It's a distraction from ISIS and from the wreckage that Syria has turned into.

Kerry and the Legitimacy of Terror

In remarks to Staff and Families of US Embassy, Paris , Secretary of State, John Kerry said this:

In the last days, obviously, that has been particularly put to the test. There's something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that. There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, okay, they're really angry because of this and that. This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn't to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people. It was to attack everything that we do stand for. That's not an exaggeration. It was to assault all sense of nationhood and nation-state and rule of law and decency, dignity, and just put fear into the community and say, "Here we are." And for what? What's the platform? What's the grievance? That we're not who they are? They kill people because of who they are and they kill people because of what they believe. And it's indiscriminate. They kill Shia. They kill Yezidis. They kill Christians. They kill Druze. They kill Ismaili. They kill anybody who isn't them and doesn't pledge to be that. And they carry with them the greatest public display of misogyny that I've ever seen, not to mention a false claim regarding Islam. It has nothing to do with Islam; it has everything to do with criminality, with terror, with abuse, with psychopathism – I mean, you name it.

There are two problems with the Secretary's description of last Winter's attack. The first is his dismissal of it as being legitimate. Charlie Hebdo satirized everything including religion. They only satirized Mohamed four times over a period of years. Regardless, Kerry thinks that this is enough to drive sane people to commit murder.

The other problem is that there was a simultaneous attack on a deli. It was a Jewish deli but not all of the patrons were Jewish. The deli was attacked for no other reason than a hatred for Jews. Does Kerry also dismiss this as legitimate? Does he think that the Jews had it coming as did anyone one patronized a Jewish deli? Or did the attack slip his mind completely?