It's not that simple!

​(First Posted on November 17, 2015)
Is anyone else a bit sick and tired of the opinions that oversimplify the topics of terrorism, Muslim, and the Syrian refugees?

“I don’t understand why we don’t just kill everyone in ISIS. Obama is not showing any backbone or leadership.” I don’t know, but my guess is that sending our people into an area to kill at random and hoping we get the bad guys may work for a Rambo movie, but probably makes for pretty shitty foreign policy. I’m not saying I don’t want terrorists whacked. I’m saying that we’re not cowboys and shouldn’t assume that wiping out brown people will fix the problem.

“We should get rid of all the Muslims.” Why? Because some small number of a small percentage of them did something evil? While we’re at it, let’s outlaw Christianity since some Christians think it’s ok to blow up abortion clinics in the name of God.  (The first person to say “But that’s different!” gets a boot to the head, unless they can explain HOW it’s different.  Until I hear a decent argument on that point, I’ll assume that terrorism is terrorism, in all its colors.) Inner city gangs are often predominately Black and Latino, so let’s throw them out too, even though most of us would have nothing to do with the gangs or any connection to them. In fact, Europeans coming to America in the first place led to mass murder, disease, and mayhem. I say it’s time to eject them too.  Some Native Americans fought with other Native Americans before the white man showed up.  Get rid of them! If we really behaved this way, this land would be devoid of all people pretty darn quickly. How about we get our heads out of our asses and seek to punish the people actually responsible for the terrorism and not group everyone with one characteristic together as if they all conspired.  By the way, do you know who the terrorist have killed most often with their violence? Other Muslims! But you don’t hear about that because the media doesn’t tend to consider their deaths to be newsworthy.  There’s no righteous indignation from politicians over that. I guess the victims deserved it by being Middle Eastern, right?

“We need to protect ourselves from the refugees. We should only take the Christians!” Why kind of bullshit is that? We’re going to close our borders from fear that ONE of the terrorists slipped in under the guise of being a refugee once??? I’m not thrilled with America dedicating so much of its resources to helping non-Americans when we have so many who need so much help at home. But, like it or not, that’s how we roll. We like to think that we see people who need help and try to help them. Frequently, we screw that up, but we at least try, damnit! So, we’ve got these refugees that are predominantly women and children, are not all Islamic, are victims of violence and bloodshed, and we want to victimize them again on the basis of what one terrorist did once? That’s insane, racist, paranoid, and a gross overreaction. Do you want to screen refugees according to some criteria (I don’t know what that criteria would be, but “not muslim” seems asinine)? Of course! I’m not saying we should allow everyone in blindly. I’m saying that maybe, just maybe, we should try to not be bigoted in the criteria that we choose to use.

When we behave these ways, we create the problems we’re trying to stop.  Remember GitMo?  Guantanamo “Let’s round up possible muslim terrorists and interrogate them” Bay?  Good ole’ GitMo created more terrorists than it stopped.  Why? Because of our inhumane treatment of the prisoners.  Because so many innocent men were made into prisoners who had nothing to do with terrorism. Because lives were destroyed when we proved that we’re the barbarians we accuse others of being.  It’s a known fact that more than a few men went into GitMo as non-threats, and came out ready to blow some shit up.  I think most ex-prisoners of internment camps can sympathize with that mindset.

I’m also not saying that we should do nothing and be ineffectual. We should be smart and fair, the way we pretend and like to hope we are deep down. I think the politicians have a tough road ahead of them when it comes to working this situation out. But that’s why they get paid the big bucks with the luxury of raising their own pay any time they feel like. They need to learn to apply intelligent solutions to difficult problems like this. They should ALL get to work and be smart. That doesn’t mean sit around and debate for three years what we should do, and that doesn’t mean charge in shooting with the tagline “Defeat them over there so they don’t attack us here.” (I’m looking at you, Dubya.) Luckily, those aren’t our only two options.  I include Obama that “Get to Work!” grouping.  He’s the big man in the big chair. He needs to put on his big boy pants and step up! To be honest, I like Obama and I think he’s doing just that.  He is not overreacting and not hoping the problem will go away if we do nothing. He’s trying to respond intelligently.  If the other politicians behaved the same way, we won’t repeat blatant acts of prejudiced paranoia like GitMo, we’ll make a true coalition of countries, and stamp this problem out.  Let’s jam our Size 1776 boot up ISIS’s ass.  But, in order to do that, we need to get our feet out of our collective mouths and find the right ass to kick.  Kicking at random at everyone that looks different than us isn’t going to solve the problem.  It’s going to result in our isolation and make us even greater targets.
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These are not simple problems with simple solutions. Let’s stop being simple-minded, platitudinous dipshits who think chanting “U! S! A! U! S! A!” fixes everything.  Let’s get to real work and solve the real problems at hand.