Victims of war deserve more help, not more war

[unhappycamper]

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/iowa-view/2015/09/23/victims-war-deserve-more-help-not-more-war/72670636/

Victims of war deserve more help, not more war
Ed Flaherty and Coleen Rowley 8:40 p.m. CDT September 23, 2015

The gut-wrenching photo of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed up dead on a Turkish shore seems to be having a psychological impact on the world similar to the photo of the little Vietnamese girl Kim Phuc running naked, burned by napalm, in June 1972. (It is interesting how an image can hit the heart, while the announcement a few weeks ago that the number of Syrian refugees went over the four million mark failed to move us).

Hearts have apparently been opened after a period of indecisiveness which witnessed many Europeans adopting a hard-hearted approach to the drownings of thousands of refugees in the Mediterranean this year, and to the humiliating, exhausting treks and incarcerations of refugees reaching Eastern Europe. Of more than 380,000 people who tried to flee across the Mediterranean so far this year, nearly 3,000 are known to have died.

Now Germany alone may take in over 800,000 war refugees. Chairs of the German Left Party are asking, however, for the U.S. to cover some of the costs of their country’s refugee-crisis since "The people who turned the Middle East into turmoil through wars, terror drones, arms shipments and deliberate destabilization, are the ones responsible for forcing millions of people to leave their homes."

The five wealthiest Gulf nations (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, and Bahrain), all staunch US allies, have refused to take a single Syrian refugee. Israel also refuses to admit any, and is building another wall to enforce no entry. Under some pressure, President Barack Obama ordered processing to begin for allowing entry into the U.S. of up to 10,000 Syrians fleeing their war torn country. Small by comparison to European "generosity," the newly announced figure nonetheless dwarfs the total number of Syrians allowed into the U.S. — only 1,300 — since the conflict began over four years ago.

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Mark my words: Another year of these occupations and our National Debt will put the United States into a 1929-style economic melt down.