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Syrian Refugees

3,632 Views | 37 Replies

Syrian Refugees 2015-11-18 17:56:46


And I should care about this issue because....


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-18 18:07:10


Your apathy is your own personal problem. Deal with it yourself.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-19 08:56:16


At 11/18/15 05:56 PM, Wegra wrote: And I should care about this issue because....

Because they won't be going home anytime soon, and seeing as their home is a freaking warzone, you can't really blame them for that.

I'll tell you a little story about just how desperate people can be. There was a Syrian guy around here whose asylum request was denied the other day. Guess what that guy did? Went and hanged himself.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-19 11:20:58


At 11/19/15 08:56 AM, DamnedByFate wrote:
At 11/18/15 05:56 PM, Wegra wrote: And I should care about this issue because....
Because they won't be going home anytime soon, and seeing as their home is a freaking warzone, you can't really blame them for that.

;;;
I suppose they could have stayed 7 tried to free their own homeland from their attackers...but I guess the runaway hide gene is too powerful.

I'll tell you a little story about just how desperate people can be. There was a Syrian guy around here whose asylum request was denied the other day. Guess what that guy did? Went and hanged himself.

As for desperate, I am of the same mind as others who believe we need to help our own first.
Our homeless,
our destitute elderly
Our mentally ill.
These people are here NOW, are our neighbours & they need help. Until we have taken care of our own.
I do not believe it is right to give our resources to others, strangers who YES I understand are also in need. But until we adopt a mentality of helping our own citizens, why would we help others instead ???

Perhaps someone could take a mission on to Fight for , the assistance for the above mentioned disadvantaged & THEN WE HELP others in need from other countries.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-19 11:24:38


It's weird how conservatives are suddenly so concerned about the welfare of the homeless when faced with the prospect of hosting 10,000 refugees, as if helping one group precludes helping the other.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-19 12:42:40


At 11/19/15 11:24 AM, Feoric wrote: It's weird how conservatives are suddenly so concerned about the welfare of the homeless when faced with the prospect of hosting 10,000 refugees, as if helping one group precludes helping the other.

That was my read. Sounds like a pretty classic "false dilemma" to me. I do not see why helping the Syrian refugees stops us from helping the homeless. If anything, seems to me what we learn from the refugee assistance program could then be applied and extended to an outreach to the homeless as well.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-19 12:52:11 (edited 2015-11-19 13:00:20)


At 11/19/15 12:42 PM, aviewaskewed wrote: That was my read. Sounds like a pretty classic "false dilemma" to me. I do not see why helping the Syrian refugees stops us from helping the homeless. If anything, seems to me what we learn from the refugee assistance program could then be applied and extended to an outreach to the homeless as well.

But that program would be self-defeating, as free handouts to the poor keep them dependent on government assistance programs, trapping them in eternal poverty, etc etc.

edit: it's like when, in response to spree shooters, the favored policy initiative is always in terms of mental healthcare in the place of additional gun control measures, knowing full well they (and especially the congressmen they vote in) would never in a million years support however many hundreds of millions or even billions of taxpayer dollars it would take to meaningfully revamp our mental healthcare institutions.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-19 13:55:10


At 11/19/15 11:20 AM, morefngdbs wrote: ;;;
I suppose they could have stayed 7 tried to free their own homeland from their attackers...but I guess the runaway hide gene is too powerful.

Yeah, right, 'cause a bunch of farmers would've stood a chance against a full blown army. You have to face reality. They either leave, or they die. Don't tell me you'd act differently in that situation.

As for desperate, I am of the same mind as others who believe we need to help our own first.
Our homeless,
our destitute elderly
Our mentally ill.

You know, this is actually something we should be doing regardless of whether refugees are coming or not. Believe me, this has been pissing me off for a way longer time.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-24 18:36:56


At 11/24/15 10:11 AM, X-Gary-Gigax-X wrote: No other issue has had me this divided inside before.

I think part of the problem is because you like a lot of other folks seems to think the process goes something like this:

Syrian Refugee comes here, goes to an office says "I'd like to become a citizen". Office person says "ok, planning to be a terrorist?"

Refugee: "Of course not"

Office person: "Perfect! Welcome to America"

That is not even CLOSE to what happens. It takes up to 24 months or more to be vetted (that's 2 years for those that aren't good with math). Half of them get sent back. The REAL problem is the over 2 million that just walk in on the Visa Waiver program we and other nations have. That's over 2 MILLION unvetted nationals that just walk right in. If someone was a terrorist looking to come in, that is a WAY better way to do it then go through the tedious refugee process and trying to get through all that screening.

But the refugee issue is "sexier" right? It's in the headlines, it's known, it's much easier to sell to low information voters as a huge danger....and bonus, it fits in with the strategy of those who want to say "government doesn't do anything right" and it makes the other side stupidly play defense and try to sign off on whatever legislation you want to ram through to screw over an immigrant population that most people don't care about anyway so these same low information voters can be made happy. It's all a big con and people never seem to figure it out.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-25 02:01:08


At 11/19/15 01:55 PM, DamnedByFate wrote: Yeah, right, 'cause a bunch of farmers would've stood a chance against a full blown army. You have to face reality. They either leave, or they die. Don't tell me you'd act differently in that situation.

Remember that time in Vietnam?


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-25 11:39:02


At 11/18/15 10:21 PM, Korriken wrote:
For what reason should we help 10,000+ refugees when we have so many homeless Americans who could use the resources? Why house 10,000 Syrians when we could be housing 10,000 Americans who are already here and need it just as much?

Do you want to help Veterans and the homeless? Get upset at the congressmen and women that have either shot down or refused to vote on the bills that are currently being voted on designed to help them. This is where the problem is, and where your focus should be, if you care about the issue. The Syrian Refugee crisis has nothing to do with our seeming inability to provide enough for our veterans and our homeless - they've had the same apathy toward their plight prior to the refugees as they do now, so why is it suddenly an issue?

Want to help our own? Help our own, then - do your part, vote out whomever blocks bills to help vets and homeless, and call your representatives expressing your concerns. Stop bitching about the refugees. Denying them access to our country will not suddenly make our Congress want to help those in need at home.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-26 08:39:15


At 11/25/15 02:01 AM, MemeFiend2 wrote: Remember that time in Vietnam?

How could I remember a time when I wasn't even born?

Keep in mind there are certain people in the world who are not as war-hungry as Americans. These refugees probably want no part of that war, they don't stand for either side, they just want to get the hell away from the fighting. You can't stop them from fleeing as long as the conflict around them goes on, that's the whole point really. We will have to care because there won't be any other way.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-26 09:49:08


At 11/26/15 08:39 AM, DamnedByFate wrote:
At 11/25/15 02:01 AM, MemeFiend2 wrote: Remember that time in Vietnam?
How could I remember a time when I wasn't even born?

Read a history book instead of liberal media

Keep in mind there are certain people in the world who are not as war-hungry as Americans.

That's just a blatantly Ad Hominem

These refugees probably want no part of that war, they don't stand for either side, they just want to get the hell away from the fighting.

Yeah, there's a lot of people who don't care about the current condition or future of their country, and we don't want people like that here.

You can't stop them from fleeing as long as the conflict around them goes on, that's the whole point really. We will have to care because there won't be any other way.

Yes actually we can stop them, by not letting them into other countries. And no, we don't have to care, because there is another way; don't let them into other countries and have them deal with their own problems that they themselves made.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-26 10:29:02


At 11/26/15 09:49 AM, MemeFiend2 wrote: liberal media

Troll spotted.

Yeah, there's a lot of people who don't care about the current condition or future of their country, and we don't want people like that here.
Yes actually we can stop them, by not letting them into other countries. And no, we don't have to care, because there is another way; don't let them into other countries and have them deal with their own problems that they themselves made.

Except that it wasn't them that made those problems, it was us ("us" in this case meaning Western nations in general). ISIS is a monster that we created, through our meddling with the region. Now, most of us didn't want any of this either, but we were dragged in by the US - going back to my point about war-hungry Americans, which you discarded as an ad hominem. The intervention that the US staged in the Middle East was both expensive and pointless, which leads me to the conclusion that the real motivation for it was simply lust for war. All it got us is this current mess. That the locals are now fleeing from. Their country has no future, we saw to that. They will come. They're desperate, they fear for their very lives, so they will always find a way. And we will have to deal with that.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-26 11:06:45


You would think that some of the Arab countries would shoulder the load and accept some of the refugees themselves instead of the West taking care of all of them. Who created Daesh is irrelevant to the point, (we would have to go to thousands of years to find the root cause) instead, we should encourage (i.e. potentially consider embargo) the Arab States who are not onboard with destroying Daesh (ISIS) and aren't willing to accept Syrian refugees.

Granted, there is going to be a lot of political bluffing on both sides, but most of the Arab States are virtually reliant on Western support, (buying oil) let's see how they act when their main means of support is cut off.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-26 11:16:18


At 11/26/15 11:06 AM, orangebomb wrote: You would think that some of the Arab countries would shoulder the load and accept some of the refugees themselves instead of the West taking care of all of them.

Um, they are. Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey (despite not being an "Arab" country) are hosting millions. With the obvious exception of Germany, Western countries are hosting anywhere from a couple hundred to tens of thousands. This is a really easy thing to look up.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-26 11:52:58


At 11/26/15 11:34 AM, MrPercie wrote:
Why can't these fucking refugees go somewhere else? like Iceland, or Finland, No one would mind them there.

IIRC, Iceland took 10,000.

Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-26 12:09:31


At 11/26/15 10:29 AM, DamnedByFate wrote:
Except that it wasn't them that made those problems, it was us ("us" in this case meaning Western nations in general). ISIS is a monster that we created, through our meddling with the region. Now, most of us didn't want any of this either, but we were dragged in by the US - going back to my point about war-hungry Americans, which you discarded as an ad hominem. The intervention that the US staged in the Middle East was both expensive and pointless, which leads me to the conclusion that the real motivation for it was simply lust for war. All it got us is this current mess. That the locals are now fleeing from. Their country has no future, we saw to that. They will come. They're desperate, they fear for their very lives, so they will always find a way. And we will have to deal with that.

Okay, the west created the problem.
And?
Everything else i said still stands to be disproved.
We don't owe them anything, we don't have to fix their problems, and we have no obligation to let them come here.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-26 12:30:48


At 11/25/15 07:13 PM, Korriken wrote:
At 11/25/15 11:39 AM, Gario wrote:
Stop bitching about the refugees. Denying them access to our country will not suddenly make our Congress want to help those in need at home.
No, no they won't, but it also won't make the situation here any better if we let refugees flood our cities. Ask the people in cities that took in people from New Orleans how it worked out, and those people are familiar with American customs and can (mostly) speak English.

Scope is a big deal, here - New Orleans displaced 273,000 people, but we're talking about a small fraction of that. Distribution is also a significant factor, as those displaced by New Orleans only moved out to the nearby states (as far as New Mexico, at least - had one grad student finish his education at UNM when I was there). Syrians would likely be disbursed throughout the country (though likely head to population centers, like Los Angeles and New York), so the impact will be felt even less so.

All that is beside the point, though. Anything that doesn't affect the governing bodies ability to help the homeless and the veterans in this country will have no significant impact on their well being.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-26 13:50:14


At 11/26/15 12:09 PM, MemeFiend2 wrote: We don't owe them anything, we don't have to fix their problems, and we have no obligation to let them come here.

They don't care about any of that. They will come, whether we like it or not.

At 11/26/15 11:14 AM, lapis wrote: Germany has no record of meddling in Middle Eastern countries after 1945 - it did not take part in or even opposed the invasions or interventions in Iraq, Syria and Libya (unless you include Afghanistan, in which case Germany was bound to act under NATO treaties since the US had been attacked on its own soil).

I wasn't even talking solely about Germany with that, you can include Britain and France there as well. But you're right, the German presence in Afghanistan kinda irks me the most (I once joked that not even Hitler was this ambitious). We basically just got dragged into another country's revenge ploy that ultimately serves no purpose and just incites more meaningless violence. More people died in that so-called "War on Terror" than in the actual terror attacks.

Your claim is moot nonetheless, those interventions surely didn't help but ISIS (or militant Islamism in general, really) would have never reached the strength it has now if it weren't for financial backing (direct or through oil funneling) or tacit protection by (elements inside) Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey;

Militant islamism in general would've never even had a cause to exist if the West hadn't put its armies there. We made the bed, and now we have to sleep in it.

however, I particularly don't see why you feel the need to assume some sort of responsibility for what other countries did in the Middle East.

I guess empathy is too much to ask for these days.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-26 14:41:16


At 11/25/15 07:13 PM, Korriken wrote: No, no they won't, but it also won't make the situation here any better if we let refugees flood our cities.

10,000 people in a country of over 300 million will not flood our cities.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-26 14:44:23 (edited 2015-11-26 14:51:04)


At 11/26/15 01:50 PM, DamnedByFate wrote: I guess empathy is too much to ask for these days.

I knew you were dumb, but did you actually just unironically suggest we should let emotion play any role in our politics?


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-26 19:33:23


At 11/26/15 02:59 PM, lapis wrote: Explain the emergence of Wahhabism in the 18th century.

He meant militant as in opposed to the West; not towards other Muslims. The Wahhabbi's by the way teamed up with the Saud family and took control of Nejd and then the Hejaz to form Saudi Arabia, a key ally of the United States. Had that been the end the story would've ended there with them persecuting nearby Muslims. But if you ever read the transcripts of Bin Laden's messages to the West, or to any anti-Western terrorist group, the reasoning behind their opposition does not lie in Western values, but rather it's hatred of Western Imperialism. OBL mentioned that his inspiration for 9/11 came from the 1982 bombing of Beirut which a US Navy detachment supported. I mean regardless of terrorism this radical strain of Islam would still be there, but if it would've been so anti-Western is another question altogether.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-27 06:53:09


At 11/26/15 02:44 PM, MemeFiend2 wrote: I knew you were dumb, but did you actually just unironically suggest we should let emotion play any role in our politics?

Negative emotion plays a big enough role in our politics. I'm just trying to be consistent.

At 11/26/15 02:59 PM, lapis wrote: The goal was nation building, which failed despite the best efforts of a large multinational coalition that, it should be emphasised, had a UNSC mandate. You know, an important reason why it failed it the fact that tribal and religious loyalties get you a lot further in Afghanistan than 'universal' human values such human rights and democracy. Honestly, the reason why the UN-backed reconstruction effort in Afghanistan failed is the same reason the integrarion of at least a million Syrians in Germany will fail: because people high in the political systems and the media don't want to entertain the idea that their 'universal' values aren't universal.

Nation building in Afghanistan failed because you can't build a nation without the consent of the people of that nation, which doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out. Now it should also be noted that in that case we were the invaders, which makes this different from the refugee situation in Germany, where technically the Syrians are the invaders - except that they don't come to take over our country and re-shape it to their liking, they come looking for help. Of course they will have to abide by our laws if they want to live here - after all, if I go to another country, I'm also subject to that country's laws -, I just mean we can't just send them to their death without giving them a chance to do so.

Explain the emergence of Wahhabism in the 18th century.

Wahhabism =/= islamic terrorism (although I won't deny they have sympathies for one another, and can overlap). There were no 9/11-style attacks prior to 9/11.

I have empathy, but you're showing empathy that, by and large, will not be reciprocated and which is therefore ultimately unsustainable. Many of the Syrian refugees you're defending will raise their children to believe there the fact that they're living in working class housing is part of the "worldwide persecution of Muslims", even though Chinese and the Indian immigrants manage to do well for themselves in similar circumstances. And I'm saying that because that's what happened to all previous experiments with large groups of asylum seekers migrating into Europe, particularly with the Iraqis and Somalis in Sweden, a country that now has one of the highest rates of ISIS fighters relative to its Muslim population in Europe.

Well, that raises the question, are they made to feel that way by themselves, or by us? That's also considering the fact that radicalization is a 2nd generation thing: Would these kids have joined ISIS if they'd had a perspective here? Whose fault is it really that integration fails? I don't know, but I do know that it's not bound to fail, for I've witnessed successful integration first-hand: I know a son of Turkish immigrants who's as German as Bratwurst. That's most likely the exception though.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-27 09:08:29


At 11/26/15 09:16 PM, Korriken wrote: 10,000 is just a down payment on the car. You think 10,000 is going to be it? Funny.

100,000 refugees in a country of 300 million will not flood our cities.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-27 16:29:30 (edited 2015-11-27 16:30:19)


At 11/26/15 09:16 PM, Korriken wrote:
Well, it will start with 10,000 and of course they'll head to the major cities. Then there will be more and more as time goes on. 10,000 becomes 20,000 becomes 50,000, becomes 100,000, and the number will keep climbing.

I shouldn't need to tell you the slippery slope you're building on. 10,000 are set to come over the next two years, so your numbers will not come about in that timeframe, save for a radical change of mind from the President, which I don't see happening for all sorts of political reasons. Therefore, for the numbers to climb to those degrees would mean to assume the refugee crisis will not only continue three years from now (possible, but not likely), but also that they will prefer to migrate to America over any nearby country (even less likely).

No, it's not likely at all the numbers you're talking about will be coming over here.

That and these people will of course feel alienated almost instantly given their social norms and customs are vastly different to our own.

Sucks to be them. One of the downsides of being a refugee.

Then of course will come the demands made of our government by the same refugees, as well as refugees of different ethnicity and faiths begin fighting each other. It's happening everywhere else. There's no reason to believe it won't happen here.

As I said before in another thread, they can make demands all they want. There's zero reason a country will actually comply with it. I see no reason my logic changes with America.

All that is beside the point, though. Anything that doesn't affect the governing bodies ability to help the homeless and the veterans in this country will have no significant impact on their well being.
Given the funds used to keep these refugees housed, fed, etc could be used for the homeless already here...

No, they wouldn't. America has the resources to handle it's homeless and veteran issues already, but it chooses not to take care of that problem, and the refugees do not affect this at all. That's my point.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-28 10:33:08


At 11/28/15 08:55 AM, lapis wrote: That's basically the same thing as I'm saying. It's the mentality of the people. Why did nation building in Germany post-1945 succeed according to you, while it didn't in Afghanistan?

Because the Germans wanted it to succeed, whereas the Afghans just didn't give much of a shit. Which is getting less and less relevant because the refugees don't want to build a nation here.

Irrelevant. Who were the Moroccans in the suburbs of Brussels invaded by?

Dude, I know you're smarter than that. In the case of Afghanistan we went there in order to tell them how to run their country. If anyone did that to us, I'd also ask them politely to go fuck themselves. The Moroccans on the other hand came to Belgium in hope of a better life. Most of them never had the intention to force their way of life upon us. Completely different story.

Haha, no they don't. Where are you going to deport them to if they don't, their countries of origin? Turkey is currently under fire for deporting about 80 law breakers. Courts in Germany wouldn't allow it, and if they did, you don't have land border like the Turks do so you'd have to drop them from a plane with a parachute - no way those countries are taking the refugees back in voluntarily. As a sidenote, failed asylum seekers in the UK for example are estimated to number about 250,000.

I'll admit to being at my wit's end here.

But the point is that the ideological basis for Islamic terrorism was already there long beofre Western interventionism. It's kind of hard to argue that the West created the whole movement when all of the preparatory work had been done long in advance.

The West didn't create Islamic fundamentalism per se, but it did create that anti-Western sentiment.

Why are there Chinese communities all over Europe without similar integration problems (as in, not being overrepresented on negative metrics like unemployment and violent crime)?

Do they integrate better because they're more willing or because we expect them to? Don't expect too many answers from me, I just have a lot of questions.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-28 12:38:49


At 11/28/15 10:33 AM, DamnedByFate wrote: Because the Germans wanted it to succeed, whereas the Afghans just didn't give much of a shit. Which is getting less and less relevant because the refugees don't want to build a nation here.

Demographics, levels of and values placed on education matter too. Germany already had some familiarity with the systems that were being considered a-ok after WW2, and they knew and had things in common with the countries trying to help them rebuild. Also a lot of them were more then ready to grasp that the old government was bad and needed to be denounced. These factors aren't present in Afghanistan or Iraq and it's clear we barreled in with bad planning, bad strategy, and a complete misunderstanding of how things worked, how we'd be greeted, etc.

Dude, I know you're smarter than that. In the case of Afghanistan we went there in order to tell them how to run their country. If anyone did that to us, I'd also ask them politely to go fuck themselves. The Moroccans on the other hand came to Belgium in hope of a better life. Most of them never had the intention to force their way of life upon us. Completely different story.

That isn't entirely true. There seems to be a false assumption here that when people leave these places, they leave because they are in TOTAL disagreement with the values and beliefs of the regime their running from. There are polls and things all over the place that prove that some of these people still believe in things that are contrary to the Western way of thinking. Honor killing, females having no rights, Sharia Law, etc. Now the question is is that enough to throw someone out? If they act on any of it, then yes, they should be punished like any other citizen would. But if they're willing to put that all aside and conform to the new rules, then they should be given the same opportunities to succeed and be productive as anyone else. But yeah, let's seriously not act like this is all a big misunderstanding and that people in that region don't hold rotten, incompatable beliefs to the West. That kind of mindset isn't helpful to solutions either.

The West didn't create Islamic fundamentalism per se, but it did create that anti-Western sentiment.

To a large degree yes. But to completely turn to this narrative is to deny the history of things like The Ottoman Empire which like any other empire ever tended to believes that their ideas were so good and right that they needed to spread them as a far and as wide as possible. They didn't need to be provoked to do that. The basic "us against them" is all right there ingrained in that culture, as it's becoming ingrained here.

Me? I'm happy as heck to have a system in place and if you can pass the tests, come on in. NONE of us would live where we live now without someone(s) somewhere in our family tree deciding they didn't like it where they were, and deciding to come to the place where we are now. There's nothing wrong with that. Also this again ignores the worse system like the Visa Waiver programs which are WAY more likely to promote terrorism because of the lack of security, and the amount of people taking advantage of it.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-28 13:51:42


At 11/28/15 12:38 PM, aviewaskewed wrote: some well-worded and intelligent stuff

All right, thanks for clearing that up.

Me? I'm happy as heck to have a system in place and if you can pass the tests, come on in. NONE of us would live where we live now without someone(s) somewhere in our family tree deciding they didn't like it where they were, and deciding to come to the place where we are now. There's nothing wrong with that.

Well, my own grandfather was expelled from his home after WW2, so forgive me if I take some matters more personally than I should.

Also this again ignores the worse system like the Visa Waiver programs which are WAY more likely to promote terrorism because of the lack of security, and the amount of people taking advantage of it.

I feel like the current refugee crisis wouldn't be such a crisis if it had been addressed earlier and properly managed. This is our reward for waiting until shit hit the fan.


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Response to Syrian Refugees 2015-11-28 15:28:49


At 11/27/15 06:53 AM, DamnedByFate wrote: Nation building in Afghanistan failed because you can't build a nation without the consent of the people of that nation, which doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out. Now it should also be noted that in that case we were the invaders, which makes this different from the refugee situation in Germany, where technically the Syrians are the invaders - except that they don't come to take over our country and re-shape it to their liking, they come looking for help. Of course they will have to abide by our laws if they want to live here - after all, if I go to another country, I'm also subject to that country's laws -, I just mean we can't just send them to their death without giving them a chance to do so.

Nation building failed in Afghanistan because the UN did not understand the fundamental differences in Afghanistan than with most other nations. Afghanistan does not have the same ideas, they don't share our ideas of nationalism or about the state. Perhaps the educated urban population does, but certainly not the majority. You see they don't find much loyalty to the Afghan nation, you can't get them to do something for the "Afghan people" as you would in Europe or Russia. Yet there isn't much sectionalist tension. To them they hold loyalty to two things; tribe and religion. Religion is the one commonality that unites the country, so leaders have undertaken religious leanings to unite the country in the past.

When the UN tried setting up the government, they didn't take into account that Afghanistan was not Yugoslavia, which a decade ago had broken up due to ethnic nationalism. Afghanistan, like Yugoslavia, is multi-ethnic and multi-religious, there is alot of diversity. Yet there is a common political culture. You see historically many different peoples ruled the area of Afghanistan, many of them foreigners. They would proclaim absolute rule, but in reality their rule wouldn't extend too far beyond the cities. The tribesmen in the mountains would acquiescence to their rule as long as they kept stability. It was a win win for both, the ruling class didn't have to fight in the dangerous mountains all to get the pitiful revenue collected from taxes from those poor farmers and the mountainmen would be left alone. In other countries a ruler had more of a solid control of their territory, for Afghans the ruler often had swiss cheese control. That was the way it was for centuries, even into the creation of Afghanistan in the 1700's.

Now not to get too into detail but modern Afghanistan has a tradition of rule over by a Pashto family. The Pashtun are Afghanistans largest ethnic group, however most Pashtuns live in Pakistan, a legacy of British Imperialism shrinking the borders of Afghanistan, which in turn has led to some cross border tension. Southern Afghanistan is inhabited mainly by the Durrani Pashtun, who ruled over Afghanistan from its earliest creation. The East have the Ghizaili Pashtun, who were the main Pashtun behind the Communist government and Taliban. The North and West are primarily Turkic, with Turkmen and Uzbek populations. There are other groups like the Hazara or Tajiks but they're another part of the Afghanni politic. In the early 20's there was a Civil War where an Uzbek warlord briefly took power before being rapidly deposed by an outcry among the Pashtun. What keeps the country together is a shared political understanding that they live in Afghanistan, not Afghanistan as a distinct people or nation but that Afghanistan is the name of the territory and dominion they live in, kind of like Medieval Europe prior to the treaty of Westphalia. Their first and foremost loyalty is to their tribe. That's why after the Taliban took over, the Communists who mostly hailed from the same tribe, sided with the Taliban despite being a total 180 ideological shift.

Thus when the UN took control they tried setting up a centralized government so as to discourage sectionalism. This of course did not take into account the political culture of Afghanistan, which had strongmen in the past but who still respected the swiss cheese power structure, and they didn't even have a strong personality to go through with it in Karzai. Karzai himself was mostly chosen because he was the most westernized and they felt like he would be the best to work with. He didn't fully understand how to work with the Afghans and utterly fell flat. Yet the state still exists, so that's promising.


"If you don't mind smelling like peanut butter for two or three days, peanut butter is darn good shaving cream.

" - Barry Goldwater.

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