you break it, you buy it: Syria

It's all well known now that the US and the UK
are the main proponents of the widened
war in Syria that has gone on for 5 years. It's
been proved well (I'll try to locate sources).
They have not funded the moderate rebels
but the crazy Daesh militants.

So, if you cause, through action or inaction
for a country to be levelled by bombs, then
you must take responsibility for the refugees
who will invariably stream out.

Some other odd issue in this situation. Syria
was an advanced society with education and
health care for all. The people tended to have
 money. So, the only reason they would leave
is because they are afraid of dying at the hands
 of Daesh. and this was a complex society
with Muslims, Druze Christians and others.

It is interesting how they were escaping but
also had advanced mobile phones through
which to plan strategy. Earlier refugees
provided information for later ones. I've seen
the reports on tv.

Also interesting is how they mostly have
the same goal, to go to Germany or
perhaps Sweden. Obviously these people
are intelligent and knowledgeable, but
if you're fleeing for your life, and
a country offers you refuge, like Greece
has, you accept it. You shouldn't get the
country of your choice. If that were to
happen, and it is, because the EU is
circus masquerading as a state, some
countries will be swamped.
Today, 14 000 refugees arrived in
Munich; one city.

A further issue is whether they are economic
migrants, or refugees. It is often lost in the
discussion that while Libyans, Syrians, Iraqis
and Afghans have every right to go to the US
or UK for refuge, because of the wars started
by those two countries, there are also
economic migrants mixed in. The media
focuses on the Syrians and ignores
the Iranians, the Pakistanis, and Africans.

Anyway, the EU has enough food and
resources for these refugees, wherever they go.
Governments may plead poverty because of
EU austerity, but refugees should not be
stopped from entering. They should be
taken care of.

two stories:

Syria: Imperial Responsibility, Imperial Conscience
Posted on September 7, 2015 by Charles Hugh Smith

I am not an unbiased observer of the Syrian refugee crisis, for we have a Syrian friend. She is a young woman, with legal residency in the U.S. She is completing her university studies in computer science. Her uncle served honorably in the U.S. Army for many years in theater (Iraq) and recently retired in California’s Central Valley.

Her brother is completing his medical studies and wants to practice medicine in the U.S.

If you’ve been to a major hospital in the U.S. recently, you know that if all foreign-born doctors vanished, the current shortage of physicians would be much, much worse.

This is to remind us all that not every immigrant or refugee is a terrorist or welfare recipient.

We have a number of young Vietnamese-American friends who are the children of Boat People who fled Communist oppression after 1975. Those who were unable to escape often served years in re-education labor camps, i.e. concentration camps, for the heinous crime of working for the Americans during the American war in Vietnam.

Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese risked their lives and the predations of pirates as they attempted to reach freedom in overloaded leaky craft. Uncounted thousands lost their lives in the process.

Today, it is self-evident that the Vietnamese-American community has paid back the help extended by the U.S. to those who bore the brunt of our Imperial meddling in Vietnam many times over.

In 1975, the U.S. did not wait for the full catastrophe to strike before accepting tens of thousands of refugees. Tiny Wake Island, an atoll in the middle of the Pacific and home to a mere 251 U.S. military and civilian personnel at the time,processed 15,000 Vietnamese refugees. (Tens of thousands of others were processed through Subic Bay and Guam.)

With the imminent fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces, President Gerald Ford ordered American forces to support Operation New Life, the evacuation of refugees from Vietnam. The original plans included Subic Bay and Guam as refugee processing centers but due to the high number of Vietnamese seeking evacuation, Wake Island was selected as an additional location.

In March 1975, Island Commander Major Bruce R. Hoon was contacted by Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) and ordered to prepare Wake for its’ new mission as a refugee processing center where Vietnamese evacuees could be medically screened, interviewed and then transported to the United States or to other resettlement countries. A 60-man civil engineering team was brought in to reopen boarded-up buildings and housing, two complete MASH units arrived to set up field hospitals and three Army field kitchens were deployed. A 60-man Security Police team, processing agents from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and various other administrative and support personnel were also on Wake. Potable water, food, medical supplies, clothing and other supplies were shipped in.

On April 26, 1975, the first C-141 military transport aircraft carrying refugees arrived. The airlift to Wake continued at a rate of one C-141 every hour and 45 minutes, each aircraft with 283 refugees on board. At the peak of the mission, 8,700 Vietnamese refugees were on Wake.

When the airlift ended on August 2, a total of about 15,000 refugees had been processed through Wake Island as part of Operation New Life.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how America once acted: with responsibility and conscience, not with tepid half-measures but with presidential orders that mobilized the U.S. government to alleviate the suffering of tens of thousands of people.

If you want a taste of frenzied fear and hatred of immigrants, please refer to the response of native-born Americans to the flood of Irish immigrants in the 19th century. It was feared the nation could not survive the onslaught of poor Irish, who brought with them a full spectrum of destruction: drunk, prone to criminality, ready to use their fists at the drop of a hat, typically Catholic–the list of horrors appeared endless.

Now might be the right moment to mention that I’m 38% Irish, and one branch of the family (Scots-Irish) immigrated to the U.S. in the Great Potato Famine. (As for rest of my mongrel mix: 37% Scots/English, 14% Viking, oops I mean Scandinavian, and 11% French, i.e. everything that mixed it up in France. Oh, and let’s not forget the 2% Neanderthal buried in the mix… that 2% might have kept me in one piece after many an injury.)

I wonder how many of the mealy-mouthed congress critters who oppose aiding Syrian refugees have relatives who arrived in the U.S. as immigrants or refugees (or slaves). Shall we hazard a guess that it’s 100% if we set aside traces of Native American heritage?

The hypocrisy is self-evident. That the U.S. has covertly supported the overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria is an open secret. That there are no American boots on the ground (at least officially) does not absolve the U.S. of partial responsibility for the refugee catastrophe unleashed by the Syrian war.

Of an estimated 4 million Syrian refugees, the U.S. has accepted a mere 1,500.We’re told Many Obstacles Are Seen to U.S. Taking in Large Number of Syrian Refugees. I am sure President Ford was told the same thing: it was “impossible” to absorb hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees.

Fortunately, President Ford (a Navy veteran himself) rejected both the defeatism and the implicit wish to wash our hands of any responsibility for our decisions and actions.

Our friend has told us of her childhood visits to relatives in Old Damascus, one of the most ancient cities in the world. Rather than reprint photos of the horrific destruction that has been wrought on Syrian cities, I want to share a photo of Old Damascus by photographer Hasan Bryiez:

image: http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2015/old-damascus-hasan-bryiez.jpg

According to our friend, a cosmopolitan mix of ethnicities and religious faiths co-existed peacefully in Old Damascus.

Now that world is no more. The social order that enabled peaceful co-existence has been shredded by the war. Though Old Damascus may appear materially undamaged, it too has passed the point where the previous pluralism can be re-established.

Syria: The Chaos of War:

This is the bargain that Damascus and Syria made: live under an iron fist in exchange for a social safety net and a space for religious and cultural, if not political, pluralism. Then Syrians took peacefully to the streets in early 2011, claiming that a family mafia oppressed not only the Sunni majority but all citizens. The government responded with overwhelming force, and its opponents turned to arms.

The war in Syria is being fought on multiple levels. One is the Great Game, the geopolitical chess game that I have often addressed: Oil, Empire and Playing the Great Game (October 1, 2014).

It’s clear that the goal of ridding the region of the Assad regime will eventually succeed; what is much less clear is what will be made of the torn battlefield.

The U.S. has around 317 million residents. How much of a burden would 50,000 or 100,000 Syrian refugees place on a nation of 317 million, a nation that once airlifted supplies to West Berlin for over a year in defiance of a Soviet blockade, a nation that airlifted 15,000 refugees to a remote atoll in the Pacific in hundreds of C-141 sorties?

Empire comes with responsibilities, and it should come with conscience. The U.S. is not a passive observer in Syria. Those of us outside the Deep State have no idea what’s been done or supplied or promised in the name of the American people.

Shall we accept 5% responsibility for events in Syria? That equates to 5% of 4 million refugees or 200,000 refugees.

There are many Syrians already here who are willing to sponsor relatives and friends. There are Christian churches willing to sponsor refugees of any faith, because they seek to walk in the path of Jesus.

There is no shortage of good will in the U.S., only a lack of political will. Sadly, we no longer have presidents or congresspeople who make the “impossible” happen to alleviate the suffering of civilians fleeing war zones.

So every refugee has to be interviewed, screened, and possibly receive medical care.How could the U.S. do so for tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees in a matter of months, yet now we are so crippled we can only manage to process 1,500 refugees from the Syrian war?

Politico toadies who like to pin American flag buttons to their lapels while ignoring our Imperial responsibilities and the conscience that should go with it are beneath contempt.

Come on, America. We could better and should do better. If we feel no obligation to the refugees from Syria, we owe it to those Americans who stepped up and did their part for refugees from wars past.

Read more at http://www.maxkeiser.com/2015/09/syria-imperial-responsibility-imperial-conscience/#JitTMCYVoGtG6C4E.99
2  Guardian

Bishop says Britain has a moral duty to accept refugees from its wars

Rt Rev David Walker, bishop of Manchester, says it is ‘unworthy’ for politicians to label displaced migrants as criminals, and country should take in ‘fair share’

Bishop of Manchester: I want leaders who look on migrants with compassion

Mark Townsend @townsendmark

Saturday 25 April 2015 20.33 BST
Last modified on Sunday 26 April 2015 00.00 BST


One of the country’s most senior bishops has said that Britain has a moral imperative to accept refugees from conflicts in which it has participated.
Bishop of Manchester: I want leaders who look on migrants with compassion
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After a week in which the death toll of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean into Europe grew to 1,700 so far this year, the bishop of Manchester, David Walker, said there was a duty to treat the survivors with compassion.

In a piece for the Observer published online, he writes: “They are pushed, not pulled, towards the EU, forced out of their homelands by war, terrorism and the persecution of minorities. A political rhetoric that characterises them as wilful criminals rather than helpless victims is as unworthy as it is untrue.”

The UK’s pivotal role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq prompted a sectarian war that the UN said had forced two million Iraqis to flee the country, an involvement that ran alongside the 13-year Afghanistan war and was followed by the 2011 attacks on Libya, both of which precipitated significant regional instability and migration.

According to the UN Refugee Agency in 2013, one in four refugees was Afghan, although most were in neighbouring countries, while the ongoing instability in Libya was credited with making the north African state a haven for people smugglers.

Walker writes: “The moral cost of our continual overseas interventions has to include accepting a fair share of the victims of the wars to which we have contributed as legitimate refugees in our own land.

“I want my country to be governed by those who are prepared to look at the faces of the desperate, be it the desperation of the asylum seeker or of the food bank client, and to look at them with compassion.”

He also criticised the language of mainstream parties on issues such as immigration and suggested that politics needed a new moral compass in the context of the growing number of deaths in the Mediterranean. “I want my political representatives to show they have values beyond expediency and appeal to the muddled middle. Only such politicians will I trust with the wellbeing of my family, my community and my nation.”
How do I offer a room to a refugee?
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Despite the huge numbers of migrants heading north, only 5,000 resettlement places across Europe have been offered to refugees under an emergency summit crisis package agreed by EU leaders, with the rest sent back as irregular migrants under a new rapid-return programme coordinated by the EU’s border agency, Frontex.

“Welcome though it was that European leaders sat down to talk about the situation this week, their conclusions seem more directed at making the symptoms less visible than at tackling the disease,” said Walker.

Last year 170,000 migrants made it to Italy; as of 17 April this year, Italian authorities had registered 21,191 more. A 2014 report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime estimated that there might be 600,000 migrants on the north Africa coast who could try to get to Europe by sea.