Wednesday, I argued that debate over the Syrian refugee crisis detracts from the heart of the issue — President Obama’s incompetency combatting radical Muslim terrorist cells.
Had this administration some semblance of strategy or will to win, the contentious and overly politicized refugee debate would be nonexistent. There would be no need for for the masses to flee heinously violent Islamist terrorists.
The better discussion here is not refugees that will take at least 18 months to vet, but how an absence of overall strategy has resulted in an emboldened ISIS.Speaking from Turkey earlier this week, President Obama renewed his commitment to stay the course with the current strategy to fight ISIS (whatever that is) and admitted he has no interest in, “pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning,” an attitude that become more obvious by the day.
Prior to Thursday’s House vote to halt President Obama’s Syrian refugee proposal, Rep. Trey Gowdy also argued that, “the people in charge of our foreign policy seem more interested in treating the symptoms,” rather than addressing why thousands are fleeing their homeland.
In his opening statement to the House Judiciary subpanel on immigration, Rep. Gowdy said:
This country has a rich and long history of welcoming those fleeing persecution. We have a long and rich history of liberating those suffering under oppression. We are the most welcoming country in the world and we are the most generous country in the world, and we help those in need both here and abroad. We administer that aide in greater quantities than anyone else. Our country has welcomed over 3 million refugees since 1975.…It is because we are free and secure and an orderly society, rooted in public safety that we are at liberty of being generous to other people. Rather than address the underlying pathology that results in displaced people, the people in charge of our foreign policy seem more interested in treating the symptoms. …There are refugees from the middle east and northern Africa because those regions are on fire and riddle with chaos and our bright lines and smart power and policies of containment or whatever we call it today, have failed. Terrorists took the lives of over one hundred innocent people in France and injured many more for no other reason than the fact that they could. They killed a hundred because they couldn’t kill a thousand and their objective is evil for the sake of evil, it is murder for the sake of murder.
We also argued Wednesday that there appears no cohesive strategy to combat, defeat, or annihilate ISIS. Rep. Gowdy’s statement reiterated this argument as well:
The president has said he’s too busy to debate the critical issue and unfortunately what passes for debate in this political day in age is the absurd conclusion about widows and orphans. It is precisely that kind of hyper-partisan conclusion designed to cut off debate rather than discuss foreign policy that has united this country with only this one fact — we have no idea what our foreign policy is in the middle east.
With the help of 47 Democrats, the House voted on a bill that would halt the President’s Syrian refugee initiative until further security measures could be in place. President Obama has threatened to veto the bill and Senate Democrats have promised the bill will not see the Oval Office desk.
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