Nicholas Kristof's column for Thursday's New York Times, "Betraying Ourselves," was full of sanctimony and misinformation on the issue of the United States accepting Syrian refugees, in the wake of the atrocities committed by radical Islamists in Paris. Meanwhile the lead editorial accused the GOP of fostering "xenophobia" by calling for a pause in allowing refugees from Syria into the country. But a normally liberal columnist attacked Obama's flatness in the face of Paris and lamented the loss of American spine in the war on terror.
Desperate refugees flee persecution and war, but American politicians -- worried about security risks -- refuse to accept them.
That’s the situation today, but it’s also the shameful way we responded as Jews were fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s. In the shadow of one world war, on the eve of another, Americans feared that European Jews might be left-wing security threats.
Ian Tuttle at National Review dealt with that popular "bad historical analogy" quite crisply:
The first, and most obvious, difference: There was no international conspiracy of German Jews in the 1930s attempting to carry out daily attacks on civilians on several continents. No self-identifying Jews in the early 20th century were randomly massacring European citizens in magazine offices and concert halls, and there was no “Jewish State” establishing sovereignty over tens of thousands of square miles of territory, and publicly slaughtering anyone who opposed its advance. Among Syrian Muslims, there is. The vast majority of Syrian Muslims are not party to these strains of radicalism and violence, but it would be dangerous to suggest that they do not exist, or that our refugee-resettlement program need not take account of them.
Kristof, by contrast, would prefer to make policy via emotional tug:
That is a stain on our conscience that risks being repeated. Some 26 Republican governors are trying to block entry of Syrian refugees. All the Republican presidential candidates say that we should bar Syrian refugees or apply a religious test and accept only Christians.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey says we shouldn’t accept Syrians even if they are toddlers and orphans. And the House of Representatives may vote this week on legislation to impede the resettlement of Syrian refugees.
The House did so later on Thursday, and it passed overwhelmingly, with almost 50 Democrats defying their president and supporting it along with the Republicans.
Kristof then picked up on another lame internet meme:
Remember what a Syrian immigrant looks like -- the father of Steve Jobs.
An anecdote that has nothing to do with ISIS.
Kristof is notorious for downplaying the threat of Islamist terrorism (or else being really bad with numbers) and even insulting brave Muslim apostate Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Then there's Kristof's classic liberal "yes...but" line, dismissing the importance of national security.
Yes, security is critical, but I’ve known people who have gone through the refugee vetting process, and it’s a painstaking ordeal that lasts two years or more. It’s incomparably more rigorous than other pathways to the United States.
....
The Islamic State is trying to create a religious divide and an anti-refugee backlash, so that Muslims will feel alienated and turn to extremism. If so, American and European politicians are following the Islamic State’s script.
This, after liberals have defensively pronounced that ISIS has nothing to do with real Islam.
Kristof then dismissed as outlandish the very idea that "moderate" Muslims should be prodded into condemning the radicals in their midst.
Let’s be careful not to follow that script further and stigmatize all Muslims for ISIS terrorism. As a young British Muslim man, Kash Ali, wrote in a post that went viral on Twitter: “I don’t understand why non Muslims think we British Muslims can stop ISIS. Mate, I can’t even get a text back from the girl I like, and you expect me to stop a terrorist organization?”
....
Helping Syrian refugees today doesn’t solve the Middle East mess any more than helping Jewish refugees in 1939 would have toppled Hitler. But it’s the right thing to do. Syrians, no less than those Jewish refugees, no less than my father, are human beings needing help, not flotsam.
Thursday's lead editorial, "Refugees From War Aren’t the Enemy," excoriated a Republican House bill to limit Syrian refugees as promoting xenophobia (it passed the House that day with the support of 50 presumably "xenophobic" Democrats).
Conceived partly in response to the Paris attacks, the bill seeks to “pause” admission of Syrian and Iraqi refugees. Though there are real fears of terrorism, this measure represents election-year pandering to the xenophobia that rears up when threats from abroad arise. People who know these issues -- law enforcement and intelligence professionals, immigration officials and humanitarian groups -- say that this wrongheaded proposal simply would not protect Americans from “foreign enemies.”
....
This is a frightening time for Europe, and for the United States. Should this bill reach his desk, President Obama is more than likely to veto it because it has little to do with fighting global terror. It is sad that this proposal has been described as a first chance for the new speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, to cooperate with the Senate. This bill doesn’t reflect who Americans are, and congressional leaders should have the good sense to realize that.
On the other side, iconoclastic liberal columnist Roger Cohen was on fire against ISIS in "Body Bags in Paris," his column for the Times' international edition. Cohen has previously written deeply naïve columns about Iran's good intentions, but he's forthright in his opposition to radical Islamists:
....freedom has to be fought for. It can demand anger. These killers make us hostages of our own democracies. They trample on the very border-crossing freedoms that European passports afford them. The West, post-Iraq, has lost its capacity for rage, even at this. That is dangerous.
We may not know who exactly the killers are but we know what they want to destroy. They spit at Montaigne, Voltaire and De Tocqueville. They loathe reason. They detest freedom. They cannot bear the West’s sexual mores. They would enslave the world, particularly its women, to the cruel god of their medievalist reading of Islam.
Cohen compared French president Francois Hollande's fire to "Obama’s flatness" in response to the massacre.
It was clear again that Europe’s generational struggle for unity and freedom against totalitarian violence tends to leave this post-Atlanticist president cold. Words and body language are not everything. Still, they count.
Obama said: “We can retake territory. As long we leave our troops there, we can hold it, but that does not solve the underlying problem of eliminating the dynamics that are producing these kinds of violent extremist groups.”
Cohen explained why holding territory was important, then concluded with this tribute to American fortitude of the past: "The West has lost its spine, a spine called America."
