Wednesday, November 18, 2015

16 bad ways to respond to the Paris attacks

I don't know if they're the worst, but they're bad.  Especially #6:
One of the Paris attackers was supposedly found with a Syrian passport—leading Republican governors here in America to vow to block Syrian refugees from entering their states.
But that passport was a fake, French officials told The Wall Street Journal, which means the governors’ freakout over refugees was likely based on a lie.

Etc. Response:
I don’t know how this isn’t obvious to the folks at the Daily Beast, but the fact that ISIS appears to have intentionally and successfully exploited the refugee system to bust an agent into enemy territory only helps the arguments of those concerned about security and refugees. It’s not like the fakeness of the passport means that the terrorist is fake. He was all too real. And it doesn’t mean he didn’t come into enemy territory by claiming to be a refugee. He still did that. And even that Abott specifically scarequoted ‘refugee’ to point out that the terrorists wasn’t an actual refugee but one posing as such means that he didn’t fall for a “ruse.” This is really stupid analysis, in fact.

If people spent a bit of time understanding the arguments of their opponents, they’d understand that the concern isn’t that refugees are all terrorists waiting to attack but that terrorists could pose as refugees. As happened, apparently, in Paris.


John Effing Kerry, our Secretary of State...

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