The Syrian refugee crisis: Is history repeating itself?

[Nadiru]

Perhaps I'm thin skinned on this one, I got to hear a lot of guesses that I must be Canadian or German when Dubbya was president. Sometimes we have to define a group for ease of conversation, thus we may say refugees or Syrian refugees. When it comes to law, policy or even trying to understand facts, it is better to be aware of shades of meaning. Some people in Syria are in a war, some may support that war, and some may honestly be trying to get the hell out of the way of a war. Some may look back at their home and see they are fleeing from it, some may look at how things have gone and want to run towards a new and better life. Some may be disgruntled and may become extremists, some may already be extremists. Fearing the ones who might be a danger, punishing a group to send a message, those are things that have not gone well in the past and nothing tells me this would go differently.

Here's the problem I have with the "let them in" logical endpoint of your argument: By allowing Syrians or Yemeni or whomever into the US because they're "refugees" you're basically flipping the bird to the Mexicans, Guatemalans, Colombians and what-have-you who want to come to the US but who are prevented from doing so.

Arbitrarily granting access to the US because "refugees" is as bad a policy as arbitrarily denying access because "Muslims," because in both cases you're doing it for emotional reasons instead of good reasons. And when it comes to policy, emotional reasons are categorically not good reasons.

[Mihalik]

I'm sorry, show me in your history books where Jewish people were committing acts of terrorism?

Nice try on your though, better luck next time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionis...tical_violence

June 30, 1924. Dutch Jew Jacob Israël de Haan was assassinated by Avraham Tehomi on the orders of Haganah leader Yitzhak Ben-Zvi[37] for his anti-Zionist political activities and contacts with Arab leaders.[38]
1937–1939 The Irgun conducted a campaign of violence against Palestinian Arab civilians resulting in the deaths of at least 250.[39][40]
July 15, 1938* A bomb left in the vegetable market in Jerusalem by the Irgun injured 28[41]
July 25, 1938* The Irgun threw a bomb into the melon market in Haifa resulting in 49 deaths[42]
November 6, 1944 Lehi assassinated British minister Lord Moyne in Cairo, Egypt. The action was condemned by the Yishuv at the time, but the bodies of the assassins was brought home from Egypt in 1975 to a state funeral and burial on Mount Herzl.[43]
1944–1945 The killings of several suspected collaborators with the Haganah and the British mandate government during the Hunting Season.
1946' Letter bombs sent to British officials, including foreign minister Ernst Bevin, by Lehi.
July 26, 1946 The bombing of British administrative headquarters at the King David Hotel, killing 91 people — 28 British, 41 Arab, 17 Jewish, and 5 others. Around 45 people were injured. In the literature about the practice and history of terrorism, it has been called one of the most lethal terrorist attacks of the 20th century.[44]
1946 Railways and British military airfields were attacked several times.
October 31, 1946 The bombing by the Irgun of the British Embassy in Rome. Nearly half the building was destroyed and 3 people were injured.[45]
April 16, 1947* An Irgun bomb placed at the Colonial Office in London failed to detonate.[46]
July 25, 1947 The Sergeants affair: When death sentences were passed on two Irgun members, the Irgun kidnapped Sgt. Clifford Martin and Sgt. Mervyn Paice and threatened to kill them in retaliation if the sentences were carried out. When the threat was ignored, the hostages were killed. Afterwards, their bodies were taken to an orange grove and left hanging by the neck from trees. An improvised explosive device was set. This went off when one of the bodies was cut down, seriously wounding a British officer.[47]
December 1947 – March 1948 Numerous attacks on Palestinian Arabs in the context of civil war after the vote of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine
'1947 Letter bombs sent to the Truman White House by Lehi
January 5–6, 1948 The Semiramis Hotel bombing, carried out by the Haganah (or, according to some sources, Irgun) resulted in the deaths of 24 to 26 people
April 1948 The Deir Yassin massacre carried out by the Irgun and Lehi, killed between 107 and 120 Palestinian villagers,[48] the estimate generally accepted by scholars.[49][50]
September 17, 1948 Lehi assassination of the United Nations mediator Folke Bernadotte,[51][52] whom Lehi accused of a pro-Arab stance during the cease-fire negotiations.

I jut highlighted the pre-WW2 incidents, as those are relevant to discussing pre-WW2 immigration. The Palestinians basically learned from Israel the whole "How to Terrorism" shtick.

Israel, another terrorist group that made it.

[shadowmouse]

Here's the problem I have with the "let them in" logical endpoint of your argument: By allowing Syrians or Yemeni or whomever into the US because they're "refugees" you're basically flipping the bird to the Mexicans, Guatemalans, Colombians and what-have-you who want to come to the US but who are prevented from doing so.

The Mexicans, Guatemalans, Colombians and others are a different issue, outside the current thread's scope. In passing, I'll mention that we probably go overboard there too.

Arbitrarily granting access to the US because "refugees" is as bad a policy as arbitrarily denying access because "Muslims," because in both cases you're doing it for emotional reasons instead of good reasons. And when it comes to policy, emotional reasons are categorically not good reasons.

Flag on the play, rewind, three beer penalty! Emotion is the language that I quoted:

And let's be clear. This is not some kind of fear of terrorism. This is poetic justice. These people shot at, bombed and laid traps for our men and women, and those of our allies.

Take that up with him, not me.

As I said, the end of WWI gave us an example of what happens with punishment. That, and similar examples across history, did not go well. The Marshall Plan (ERP) wasn't perfect, but it seems to have worked much better than the other way to handle things. Every time we allow ourselves to be painted as villains, we give traction to multiple groups who need us as their villain. In rough terms, we need a Marshall Plan, not a War Guilt Clause. Taking in refugees isn't just soppy emotionalism, it is recognizing that conflicts are fought today as much in disputes online as on the battlefield. That which makes America look bad in a region undermines our ability to get things done. There is a reason that during the Cold War we busily brought in foreign students, shipped aid overseas, and ran programs like VOA.

[Stop Pretending]

Yeah.....still not seeing any terrorist incidents in Germany like was suggested. To think you wasted all that time to only fail at proving the false claim.

[dr2022]

I'm sorry, show me in your history books where Jewish people were committing acts of terrorism?

Nice try on your though, better luck next time.

never heard of the Lavon affair?

[Nadiru]

As I said, the end of WWI gave us an example of what happens with punishment. That, and similar examples across history, did not go well. The Marshall Plan (ERP) wasn't perfect, but it seems to have worked much better than the other way to handle things. Every time we allow ourselves to be painted as villains, we give traction to multiple groups who need us as their villain. In rough terms, we need a Marshall Plan, not a War Guilt Clause. Taking in refugees isn't just soppy emotionalism, it is recognizing that conflicts are fought today as much in disputes online as on the battlefield. That which makes America look bad in a region undermines our ability to get things done. There is a reason that during the Cold War we busily brought in foreign students, shipped aid overseas, and ran programs like VOA.

For the bulk of Middle Eastern countries, you'd have to somehow install a legitimate government, get the people behind it somehow (since it would literally be a US puppet,) train up a cohort of educated, informed, patriotic individuals, keep them from fucking leaving the country to make more money elsewhere, and then you could finally sustain industrialized life there.

This is in sharp contrast to postwar Europe, which already had large swathes of technically skilled and knowledgeable people who were motivated to build the country back up, and the only thing they needed was capital and raw materials. The two plans aren't similar except in the most superficial of ways, and it's disingenuous to try and equate the two. The US tried to do the very thing you're talking about in Iraq for a decade, at a cost of over a trillion dollars, and that government folded to ISIS in a matter of months. And all of this has made the US look worse off than it already did since it's now credited for giving ISIS the keys to the proverbial car and liquor cabinet as well as having failed to build Iraq back up.

[dr2022]

Yeah.....still not seeing any terrorist incidents in Germany like was suggested. To think you wasted all that time to only fail at proving the false claim.

Why in Germany specifically? your broad statement was that they weren't Jewish terrorists in history, which you were proven wrong on that point. Why you gotta back peddle?

[Kjanaprik]

The fear here is not that of extremists, more because of economical numbers, Iceland's economy is extremely unstable, we have our own currency and as such it is limited to 330K people which increases the instability of it, and a country with as few inhabitants is this means less total gross leading to fewer investment capabilities.

For 1 refugee with 2 kids (refugees with kids will be given priority once we take in refugees)

The first year:
Welfare: ~1.300$/month (gets cut by 1/3 if you manage to get a 50% job, 2/3 if 100% job)
Financial aid for appartment: ~770$
Financial aid for "Necessary kitchen equipment": ~770$
Financial aid for furniture: ~390$ per children under 18

summary for year 1: ~17.800$ for welfare+financial aid
housing benefits (boligstøtte) : ~4.100$
Child benefits: ~5.000$

Total Year one: ~27.300$*


All refugees (regardless of age) have the right to receive free classes in Icelandic, children go to normal school for free (Mandatory up to 16y/o)

720 hours is the minimum an adult can spend learning Icelandic.

Icelandic language classes assuming minimum requirement(720 hours): ~3.500$
kindergarten (2-6 year olds): ~11.600$
Elementary (7-16 year olds): ~ 10.800$
Further education (up to 24 year olds): ~4.600$

Total for 1 year of education costs assuming 1 adults, 1 kindergartner 1 elementary : ~26.000$*

Health care: N/a, trying to keep cost to minimum so i assume they will need no surgeries/dental aid the first year

All refugees are required to have 10 visits to Psychiatrists, welfare workers and psychologists: 930$ per person

so minimum total, for a woman with 2 kids at the ages 4 and 14 is: ~56.000$ for the first year*


If we Just use Syrians and look at Sweden, there are 30.000 Syrian refugees there, Swe has a population of 9,59mil which gives us that ~0,3% of swedes are syrians (keep in mind that Syrians only make up about 20% of all refugees in Sweden)

If we took as many, that would be 1.032 refugees, and result in ~57.990.000$ for the year** with 0$ return, will most likely be a higher number considering that Syrians are not the only refugees.

This may not seem like that big of a deal for larger countries, but small countries such as Iceland, Liechtenstein,Faroe islands*, &ct, will have massive problems trying to dish out this kind of money for refugees.

Sure, maybe they'll start showing profitable returns some years down the line, but the first few years will still be rough.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Iceland has never been active in refugee aid, this chart shows all asylum seekers between 2008-2014 (Blue = Applied, green= Granted the status of refugee, red= Granted asylum for humanitarian reasons).
We have abused our geographical location quite a lot to keep our borders shut.

Costs aside I don't know if they even want to be here, in the 2014 column, 50 of those refugees really wanted to come to Iceland over other countries, of them ~30 only wanted to live in Reykjavík (capital), did not want to live in any other town. Only 12 showed interest in living in Akureyri (2.nd largest nuclei in Iceland). The rest didn't mind where they lived.

* The math using the numbers provided may not add up due to all the rounding down and currency exchanging i did, I calculated the Total numbers using 3 leading zeros and my own currency, which i then rounded and converted into USD.
* This number is assuming that each syrian refugee has 2 kids, 1 in elementary, 1 in kindergarten
* sovereign state of Denmark so they may get aid

TL;DR: shit's expensive doe, we gun' go broke!

[shadowmouse]

The US tried to do the very thing you're talking about in Iraq for a decade, at a cost of over a trillion dollars

No, we *said* that was what we were doing. Some people even wanted to do it. We followed bad intel before the war with poor information and little understanding of local issues during that reconstruction. At the same time, many of our own people were up to the eyeballs in corrupt deals. It is easy to spend over a trillion dollars when building gas stations that cost us 43 million for a single gas station.

Trying to accept refugees may be a "lesser of two evils" choice, but other choices are worse. I've quoted Skroe's poetic justice line twice now, kindly tell me how that is a damned bit better. We cannot fail to act. Many groups want to see us fail, and will do their best to paint any act or even inaction on our part in a negative light. Trying to do something positive at least attempts to mitigate that damage. Sometimes, that's where one has to start. If we don't, we let groups hostile to us control the narrative.

[ringpriest]

You know, I took the time to look at this pretty wild claim that "Global Warming had an effect on Syrian agriculture" (which by the way is laughably part of your causality chain you accuse me of being arbitrary about. You know what I found? One study about the severity of a five year drought, and a lot of highly tenuous language. But sure enough, it fits the lefty narrative and their favorite topic, so the Nation (magazine) dove head first into prounouncing it.

Drought and natural disasters undoubtedly plays a role in fomenting unrest., That's nothing new. To link the drought to Climate Change though? Sloppy prounouncing by non-scientists with a dash of wish-fulfillment. Patient zero was 100%, Assad's crack down, the end.

"Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought" as published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, by Colin P. Kelleya, Shahrzad Mohtadib, Mark A. Cane, Richard Seager, and Yochanan Kushnirc (they're all climatology PhD's currently working in that field).

The US/allied support of allies came later. To make the most of the situation. It came after the war pulled in it's first hundred thousand casualties or so, guestimating a bit here.

The money was flowing well before the civil war even started, "WikiLeaks: U.S. secretly backed Syria opposition"

The U.S. money for Syrian opposition figures began flowing under President George W. Bush after he effectively froze political ties with Damascus in 2005. The financial backing has continued under President Obama, even as his administration sought to rebuild relations with Assad.

Weapons were being openly shipping to rebels by the end of 2012: "The US Is Openly Sending Heavy Weapons From Libya To Syrian Rebels", but its clear that the US was aiding them long before that: "C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition".

Not war criminals, but that's besides the point.

"Iraq invasion violated international law, Dutch inquiry finds"
"Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, says Annan"
"British deputy prime minister admits Iraq war was illegal"
"UK government lawyer said Iraq war was illegal"
"Whistleblower: Foreign Office officials thought war 'illegal"
"War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion was illegal "

That is precisely the point - Bush (and his whole crew) launched an illegal war under false pretenses, that lead directly to the deaths of thousands of US men and women serving in the armed forces; but you prefer to ignore that so that you can get on board the Five Minute Hate bandwagon.

No evidence of lying and you know that.

George W. Bush’s CIA briefer admits Iraq WMD “intelligence” was a lie
"Bush links Al Qaeda in Iraq to 9/11; critics reject connection"
"White House 'warned over Iraq claim'" - The CIA warned the US Government that claims about Iraq's nuclear ambitions were not true months before President Bush used them to make his case for war, the BBC has learned.
"Colin Powell admits the case for attacking Iraq was wrong"

Paul Krugman summed it up in the NYT last May:

The Iraq war wasn’t an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that. We were, in a fundamental sense, lied into war.

The fraudulence of the case for war was actually obvious even at the time: the ever-shifting arguments for an unchanging goal were a dead giveaway. So were the word games — the talk about W.M.D that conflated chemical weapons (which many people did think Saddam had) with nukes, the constant insinuations that Iraq was somehow behind 9/11.

And at this point we have plenty of evidence to confirm everything the war’s opponents were saying.

I pity your fractal confirmation bias and willful ignorance.

Have you read my posts on Syria in the past two and a half years? You talk to me like I think the Chaos is a bad thing.

You need to work on your reading comprehension - it's quite obvious you hate civilization; I'm saying that makes you terrible at being a human being. I hope you get better.

[Spectral]

I mean this as a hearty endorsement of both posters - reading an argument between Skroesec and ringpriest is pretty educational for me. I really appreciate that both of you actually know your shit and bother to make coherent arguments with sources.

[Shadowspire]

For anyone opposed to taking in refugees there is just one question you need to answer - what if it was you?

If your own country should fall to ruin and you be forced to flee, would you expect other countries to turn you away? Should they start protests and campaigns to keep you out, just because a tiny amount of your people might be bad, or because they say you wont "integrate" well or make a "postive contribution"?

Any reason you give to reject refugees must also be applied to yourself, as ALL peoples have murderers, rapists and criminals among them.

If it was me? A fat black American born? No I wouldn't expect help. Almost all of you fucks show no remorse in how much you'd be happy if my country was just destroyed. So if by chance civil war broke out to the point 2/3 of America was impossible to live in, I wouldn't expect any of you countries to give a hand, hell I expect half of you to sign up to your military just to be able to kill an American.
And plus given this crisis, you all would have a bigger distrust thanks to my skin color. So yeah I know where I stand thanks to others in my country.


[Infracted - flaming]

[Babzidu]

I mean this as a hearty endorsement of both posters - reading an argument between Skroesec and ringpriest is pretty educational for me. I really appreciate that both of you actually know your shit and bother to make coherent arguments with sources.

Seconded. The balance is mostly tilted away from vitriol and more towards informed argument. Its a pleasure to read.

[Zoldor]

I have a better solution get the US and Europe to stop fighting wars for the SA, Dubai, Isreal, UAE, Qatar etc and let those countries do their things. If they don't like Syria let them deal with Syria. Instead, we'll keep sucking that money dick and bombing countries and creating Contra like cells like we did in South America. The refugee crisis is self made in an attempt to appease the Middle Eastern resource and money Kings by taking away their need to change their government to actually give a fuck about its citizenry. So instead they cause turmoil, crank up export prices and send away the lower class to other countries and keep the wealth at the top. If we all stopped dealing with North Africa and the Middle East they might actually get their shit together or continue to live likes it 1930 one of the two.

I'm not scared of immigrants or refugees, but the problem is our money hungry top end is fucking us all and its becoming more and more ever present everyday on a global scale. When food and water gets scarce in the next 20 years we'll see how open armed we all are. I don't think they are all terrorists. Hell as a US citizen I'm more likely to be killed by a white christian or a police officer than I am a refugee or immigrant or terrorist in our medias definition. I still don't dodge white guys at the movies or fail to interact with police either. Living scared isn't living free.

[Shadowspire]

I was infracted for answering a question? Someone's biased here....

[stabetha]

Just thought I'd share what came across my Facebook feed.

fantastic example of an appeal to emotion fallacy, good work.

[Pakaro]

For anyone opposed to taking in refugees there is just one question you need to answer - what if it was you?

If your own country should fall to ruin and you be forced to flee, would you expect other countries to turn you away? Should they start protests and campaigns to keep you out, just because a tiny amount of your people might be bad, or because they say you wont "integrate" well or make a "postive contribution"?

Any reason you give to reject refugees must also be applied to yourself, as ALL peoples have murderers, rapists and criminals among them.

Actually no it shouldn't. You're completely omitting the fact that they're from a culture which, in fact, does NOT integrate into western culture well by any means.

[Deleted]

For anyone opposed to taking in refugees there is just one question you need to answer - what if it was you?

If your own country should fall to ruin and you be forced to flee, would you expect other countries to turn you away? Should they start protests and campaigns to keep you out, just because a tiny amount of your people might be bad, or because they say you wont "integrate" well or make a "postive contribution"?

Any reason you give to reject refugees must also be applied to yourself, as ALL peoples have murderers, rapists and criminals among them.

1) more than likely yes


2) they really don't have to be


'What if it was you?'

But it isn't. So you'll excuse me if I don't let my emotions cloud my judgement.

[Beet]

I'm sorry, show me in your history books where Jewish people were committing acts of terrorism?

Nice try on your though, better luck next time.

This times a thousand. The Jewish people weren't committing acts of terror against anyone innocent. Shit they didn't even do it against the nazis. So there's a huge difference between letting refugees in during WW2 and letting Syrian refugees in now. Oh and because the situation is entirely different. The Jews were being chased out by Germany who was constantly invading countries they lived in. This isn't happening with ISIS. They're not riding with tanks and the Luftwaffe chasing Syrian refugees as they invade country to country in take overs. So to compare the two is just dumb.

[ringpriest]

This times a thousand. The Jewish people weren't committing acts of terror against anyone innocent. Shit they didn't even do it against the nazis. So there's a huge difference between letting refugees in during WW2 and letting Syrian refugees in now. Oh and because the situation is entirely different. The Jews were being chased out by Germany who was constantly invading countries they lived in. This isn't happening with ISIS. They're not riding with tanks and the Luftwaffe chasing Syrian refugees as they invade country to country in take overs. So to compare the two is just dumb.

Point of Information: (Quoting Wikipedia, List of Irgun attacks) "During the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine against the Mandatory Palestine, the militant Zionist group Irgun carried out 60 attacks against Palestinian people and the British Army. Irgun was described as a terrorist organization by The New York Times, the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry, prominent world figures such as Winston Churchill and Jewish figures such as Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, and many others." The most well known attack by Irgun is the King David Hotel Bombing in 1946, which killed 91 people.


Of course, that's a small group of criminal actors (though admittedly one long lionized by the Israeli history and with strong ties to the later government of Israel) whose actions don't justify any treatment of the Jewish People as a whole, who weren't committing attacks on anyone, innocent or not, anymore than the Syrian People are now.