Last night at dinner a relative from NYC who described himself as a "bleeding heart liberal" opposed cutting off the immigration of Syrian refugees because in his view that would run counter to American traditions. He's a great guy, but that is a dangerous misinterpretation. We have no obligation to commit collective suicide.
What's more troubling is that supposed experts on the subject are voicing similar views. On today's State of the Union with Jake Tapper, Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution actually surmised that the Paris killer who made it into Europe was probably the only terrorist among the hundreds of thousands of refugees. "There's perhaps one refugee that was part of this out of hundreds of thousands. That's kind of a collective punishment, if you say, well, we're going to try to stop all refugees from coming in because of one person."
Hamid also said that "we have to be very careful about this us versus them rhetoric." Hamid surely knows better than to imagine that there is only one radical Islamist among the hundreds of thousands of "Syrian refugees" flooding into Europe, and now into the United States. Why would Hamid willfully understate the threat in this way?
And yes, it is us versus radical Islam. If we don't recognize the nature of the fight, we are certain to lose it.
SHADI HAMID: ISIS wants to create rifts and wants to divide the French people and alienate French Muslims to say, look, France is against you, against refugees, Europe is turning to the far right. We have to be very careful about this us-versus-them rhetoric. There's perhaps one refugee that was part of this out of hundreds of thousands. That's kind of a collective punishment, if you say, well, we're going to try to stop all refugees from coming in because of one person.
