by Steve Timmer

Nov 17, 2015, 10:00 AM

You’re right, Kurt, let ’em drown

Tuesday evening  addition – 11/17: Sen. Minority Leader David Hann pipes in:

“This is not a discussion about permanently closing our borders, or even permanently rejecting Syrian refugees,” Hann said in a written statement. “But right now, we are lacking the intelligence necessary to implement security screenings intensive enough to guarantee our safety.”

If we sat around for a while, I am sure there s a long list we could compile of things that David Hann knows little about. But at the tippy-top of that list, I’m sure, is information about international terrorism, and the “intelligence” we do or do not possess about it.

You forget yourself, David.

*  *  *  *

Kurt Daudt says shut the door on refugees. Keith Downey says that DFLers are sub rosa supporters of Daesh. Jeb Bush (!) wants to focus on Christian refugees. About half of the governors in the states want to exclude refugees from their states. (Governor Dayton ain’t among ’em, bless his heart, which is why Kurt Daudt sent his whining letter.)

And Donald Trump — you knew he’d show up here somewhere, didn’t you? — wants to shutter mosques.

As Juan Cole points out, however, not that it ought to need to be pointed out, save to the aforementioned frightened, heartless, slavering boobs, that:

• The Paris attackers were Europeans, not Syrians; the one Syrian passport “found” at one of the crime scenes is fake.
• The attackers were not refugees.
• The U.S. accepts refugees from other conflict areas, Iraq among them.
• The refugees undergo extensive background checks.
• Half the Syrian population is homeless; Syrian refugees are not guerrilla fighters or terrorists. They are fleeing the oppression of the Bashar al-Assad government or the brutality of Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) or al-Qaeda. The are the victims of America’s enemies.

Look, Kurt and Keith, I know it is hard for you to imagine that anyone other than yourself exists, much less think they might be worthy of some assistance. But try, will you?

Update: Whatever else is said about Kurt and Keith, they are the followers of a proud tradition:

No matter the alarming rhetoric of [Adolf] Hitler’s fascist state — and the growing acts of violence against Jews and others — popular sentiment in Western Europe and the United States was largely indifferent to the plight of German Jews.

“Of all the groups in the 20th century,” write the authors of the 1999 book, “Refugees in the Age of Genocide,” “refugees from Nazism are now widely and popularly perceived as ‘genuine’, but at the time German, Austrian and Czechoslovakian Jews were treated with ambivalence and outright hostility as well as sympathy.”

A further update: Here’s just one image from a photo essay of some of the Syrian refugee children.

Syrian refugee child in Jordan (via www.buzzfeed.com)