Even before the terror attacks in Paris last week, the possibility of terrorists was the reason the Harper government gave for being so incredibly slow to accept Syrian refugees. When the news of the attacks broke Friday afternoon my time, it was literally minutes before I heard it in the office water cooler talk: “No wonder, there’s so many refugees there.” And of course we have the Governors of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Texas, saying their states will not accept refugees, and the Premier of Saskatchewan asking our Prime Minister to put his ambitious refugee resettlement program on ice.
This is racist, indecent and inhumane garbage, and pants-on-head levels of stupid.
As a pacifist-leaning liberal arts major, I am pretty much the opposite of a military strategist. And if somebody like me can see how low the ROI is for terrorists to try to infiltrate foreign countries under the guise of refugees, then I have to conclude wilful ignorance (or worse) on the part of officials in higher levels of government, whose job it is, last I heard, to think strategically.
Radicalizing and training up a terrorist is an investment. Are you seriously going to put that investment on a leaky boat that may or may not reach its destination, and then, assuming the boat makes it, have your investment walk for months, sleeping rough, with little to eat, and provisioned with only what he can personally carry, only to have his route to the target country barred by intermediary countries that may or may not let him through? Then, assuming he reaches his destination, he still needs to learn to fit in with the society he intends to attack, enough to walk the streets unnoticed, and you still have to arm him, because he probably opted to carry food rather than explosives on his long walk.
The refugees fleeing IS are unlikely to be a useful source of terrorist recruits – if they agreed with IS, they would presumably be staying and fighting under their banner.
As the attacks on Paris demonstrate, there’s a much higher-ROI way of blowing up people in a foreign country: have their own citizens do the dirty work for you.
The narrative emerging after these attacks is that IS wants to create division and hatred. That they want to destroy what they call the “grey zone” of society, where Muslims and non-Muslims live and work together productively and peacefully. What will ultimately destroy IS, is expanding and solidifying those grey zones.
Domestically, it means combating Islamophobia and the othering of Muslims, and ensuring that Muslims are not excluded from the benefits and opportunities inherent in living in a well-to-do secular democracy. Failure to do so will only produce disaffected angry youth who feel like they have nothing to lose, a rich recruiting ground for induction into radicalism and ultimately terrorism.
When it comes to the refugees fleeing Syria, we need to get them safe, get them homes, and provide them all the support they need to adapt to their new countries and become full and contributing citizens.
Or, we can do IS’s radicalization work for them. All we have to do is watch while more children drown; let children freeze this winter; not find a place for all these families to be safe and call home; not give them full opportunity to belong when they get here.
8 comments
November 17, 2015 at 6:18 am
Steve Ruis
Absolutely spot on. Terrorism is a tactic used by the weak. Strong countries/groups don’t use it. It should not be seen as a challenge so much as an admission of weakness. By responding as if it is a challenge from a strong opponent, as the U.S. did in Iraq is a tremendous waste of resources and results in a loss of face. That loss of face is a recruiting tool for the organization committing the terror acts. (That what you oppose you make stronger.) We shouldn’t ignore the Paris incident, but we should treat it more like a mosquito bite. Use police to swat the perpetrators and make no other mention of it. Then terrorists will ask “what good would it do?” when someone suggests another act of terrorism. If one doesn’t negotiate with terrorists, once shouldn’t respond.
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November 17, 2015 at 6:53 am
carlalouise89
Love this. Brilliant post. Thank you!
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November 17, 2015 at 9:14 am
tildeb
I certainly agree in accepting more refugees. I don’t care if they’re Muslim or atheist. Helping people who require help is what good people do.
I also understand the need for security screening and I think you’re exactly right pointing out the ludicrous idea of training people to be effective terrorists and then sending them into these lands by means of pretending to be refugees.
But I cannot disagree more strongly with your badly misguided notion about ‘Islamophbia’. The root cause of violent jihad is the idea of imposing Islamic values on those who do not share them. This religious value i- called Islamism – is antithetical to Western liberal secular democracy. And so this necessarily means identifying Islam itself as a fundamental and integral part of this problem. Identify and criticizing Islamism is not ‘Islamophobioa’; that’s a term promoted by Islamists and those in the West called ‘the regressive Left’ who buy into this false narrative that criticizing Islam for its failure to reform is somehow an expression of intolerance and disrespect of Muslims.
Yes, to exercise liberal values is to respect individual autonomy and legal equality, but it sure as hell isn’t to support self-censorship and the banning of reformist Muslim voices who are usually painted by the ever-handy smearing term of ‘Islamophobe’. This false narrative is supported by the mistaken notion that violent jihadists are produced by not by some of the fundamental tenets taught in the Koran as the perfect word of God but by “disaffected angry youth who feel like they have nothing to lose, a rich recruiting ground for induction into radicalism and ultimately terrorism.” This is not true. Religious ideology fundamental to Islam is what produces people willing to commit to violent jihad in its name. Blame where blame is due.
Unless and until we are able to speak Voldemort’s name out loud and call out Islamists (and those in the West all too willing to go along with the Islamist’s call for tolerance and respect for it’s incompatible values) for producing violent jihad in its name, we help only the Islamist cause and guarantee continued mistrust of all Muslims regardless of their actual and very human needs.
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November 17, 2015 at 9:20 am
The Intransigent One
I’ve been mulling a third all-terrorism all-the-time post (yeah, I’ve got one scheduled for tomorrow too) about Islamism vs secularism, Islamophobia, etc. . So I’ll be getting back to your comment, at length, in a few days.
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November 17, 2015 at 9:31 am
tildeb
I look forward to reading your take on it, TIO.
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November 17, 2015 at 10:25 am
tildeb
You’ve probably already seen this, but it’s too good not to pass on.
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November 17, 2015 at 10:32 am
The Intransigent One
I disagree, but still funny in a twisted kind of way (hadn’t seen it before)
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November 17, 2015 at 10:38 am
tildeb
And that’s why reading your thoughts are so interesting!
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