How is the analogy terrible?

Nazis couldn't really pass for Jews.

Nazis absolutely could pass for Jews, and contemporary officials up to and including FDR worried that Nazi saboteurs would pass for Jewish refugees. Next!

http://fortune.com/2015/11/21/syrian-jewish-refugees-america/
(ctrl-f "Franklin Roosevelt" and follow the Google Books link)

Maybe we should give Syrians their own country? We can find some land in the middle east and announce that it's now the Syrian homeland.

Also how many Nazi sabateurs made it to the US and other allied nations and how many people did they kill?

No Nazi saboteurs that I'm aware of successfully posed as refugees in the US. However, there is a fascinating story of some who made it here by submarine:

http://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-german-saboteurs-invade-america-in-1942.htm

Also, I see what you did there.

(For the record, I'm all for comparing the Syrian refugees to Jewish refugees from WWII, and American callousness now to American callousness then, as an argument for taking in Syrian refugees now. Not sure if that was clear.)

Many countries are averse to accepting refugees. Not just the US.

I'm unclear quite why so many people seem to think that the best solution to the Syrian refugee problem is to transport vast amounts of the population to every corner of the globe. It takes people away from their homes, it causes huge problems and tensions in host countries, and it discriminates in favour of those refugees who are fit and come from wealthy backgrounds.

The ideal solution is to provide shelter for the people driven from their homes until the war is over and they can return. This solution is largely what is happening in the region, with large refugee camps being run in safe countries near Syria. Naturally the most vulnerable people will struggle in refugee camps, so it is only right for responsible nations to take them in so they may have access to extra facilities they need.

And yes, those entering Western nations should be vetted. IS are targeting Western cities for terror attacks and allowing them easy access would be insanity. France lost more people in one night in Paris than they did in the entire Afgan war. This is not an simple issue we can afford to take chances with.

"France lost more people in one night in Paris than they did in the entire Afgan war."

You realise that most of the Paris attackers were French or Belgian nationals, and that none has been proven to be from Syria, right?

"Thousands of people might die through your inaction but at least it's not you."
- ghandi

@ Jamie

Quoting from the Guardian

"Isis said it had dispatched eight jihadi – leaving open the possibility that one may still be on the run – wearing suicide bomb belts and carrying machine guns, across the French capital on Friday night in a “blessed attack on ... crusader France”.


The “carefully selected” sites and coordinated nature of the attacks were intended, it said, to show that France would remain one of its main targets as long as its present policies continue.


“France and those who follow her voice must know that they remain the main target of Islamic State and that they will continue to smell the odour of death for having led the crusade, for having boasted of fighting Islam in France and striking Muslims in the caliphate with their planes,” the group said in a statement."

Now, forgive me for leaping to crazy conclusions, but when you have hundreds of thousands of enemies in Syria and the surrounding region who have attacked you on repeated occasions and have said they really really want to attack you in the future, and there happens to be a huge stream of people moving with minimal checks from the same region into Europe, it would take an insanely brave person to claim that none of the IS fighters have spotted the opportunity.

Answer me this. Why wouldn't they?

Easy access for a few people is a given, though. Blocking out refugees isn't going to make entering France harder for IS fighters IMO.

I think comparisons to Jewish refugees during/after WW2 are a bit unfair. There are legitimate concerns to taking in refugees from a war-torn region where extremism is a common occurrence. I'm not against bringing in some refugees. 10,000 mostly women and children aren't going to cause an apocalypse in the US if we spread them out. However, I'm concerned for countries like Greece, Germany, France, etc., that are closer to the issue.

"Easy access for a few people is a given, though. Blocking out refugees isn't going to make entering France harder for IS fighters IMO"

I genuinely hope you're right, but I suspect not. Time will tell.

The power of Isis lies in its appeal to radical Muslims who are citizens in their own right. If you were to erect a wall around Europe it wouldn't stop the homegrown cells from carrying out attacks.

@ Gobbledydook

What's your point? Building a sea wall will help stop flooding from the sea, but it won't stop flooding from a river. Is that a reason not to build a sea wall? No. Does it's inability to do anything about flooding from rivers mean it won't reduce floods? No.

"I genuinely hope you're right"

You might misunderstand then. I'm saying they're coming in no matter what. It's the terrorist equivalent of "resistance is futile".

I personally think we should somehow fight the idea rather than the people though.
With this idea in particular, it seems like you create 5 new terrorists for every terrorist you kill.

I don't know how to make less people adhere to these ideas, but I think that would be the crucial first step in the right direction..

US-centric argument to follow:

Access to Europe is not the same as access to the US. Syrian refugees can't flee by boat to various shores with overloaded and underfunded refugee screening processes when coming to the US. There's already a two-year vetting process in place.

Oh, and what about those refugees that have been admitted from the region recently? Say, in the last year or so? Surely we can't rationally say ISIS definitely wasn't planning to exploit the refugee crisis before Paris. So, what do we do, pack off those 20,000 or so refugees from Iraq to internment camps until we're really really sure we don't have to worry about them, except for the part where packing them off to internment camps probably radicalized some of them?

And it's not like we aren't aiding the refugees where they are, in Turkey and Jordan and Lebanon. But it's one thing to say the ideal solution is to accommodate the refugees where they are; quite another for those countries, some of which are already straining to deal with refugees from previous Western neocolonial bullshit *cough* Iraq *cough*, to handle a sudden influx of 4 million people to regions without the surplus infrastructure to support them.

ISIS is not rigid. Block refugees, they'll go to the (much easier) routes of using foreign nationals they've recruited and access to Western nations via tourist visas and the like. And let's not forget that blocking refugees is also a win for them; they hate that Muslims are fleeing their glorious caliphate and want to further the "Islam vs. the West" narrative. Will we actually see less terrorism if we block refugees? I find that a highly dubious claim.

Not sure how much I find cracked to be reliable, but interesting read none-the-less.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/isis-wants-us-to-invade-7-facts-revealed-by-their-magazine/

ISIS is having financial trouble right now. One big cause for this economic collapse is that taxpayers are fleeing ISIS-held territory, because duh.

Another major issue vexing ISIS is the difficulty of getting enough qualified specialists. At least three of their articles issued pleading calls for physicians and other experts to please leave their comfortable lives behind for the explosion-filled cities occupied by the Islamic State group.

I read that article too. I wasn't expecting the funding issues, because I assumed foreign backers and oil sales constituted the bulk of their funding with the plundering of anyone still there a nasty bonus, but the rest is pretty straightforward. (I cocked an eyebrow when the article's author expressed surprise at ISIS' sectarianism.)

Dear Octavious, I'd recommend some degree of scepticism when reading any Isis/daeth propaganda on the interwebnet thingy
Yes Syrian refugees should be security screened, Australia will do that to the 20,000 refugees we're helping, but it's illogical to think that many of these people fleeing the death and destruction caused by Isis will have any sympathy or support for those maniacs.
Someone makes the valid point that keeping tens of thousands of refugees in refugee camps without much hope creates the ideal recruiting situation for the Isis maniacs

Good point Lethologica, about the rewards for us from helping the refugees fleeing the glorious caliphate in terms of the ideological contest. The majority of the refugees who come to Australia will get housing, health and education services, employment and quickly set about making safe lives for their children, can't see too many of them wanting to give up a good life here to become suicide bombers compared to what they might do if we lock them into misery in an unhealthy camp somewhere

Dearest Major Mitchell,

I am not accusing a single refugee of being an IS member. The trouble is that there is absolutely nothing in the way of ISIS fighters from joining the stream to refugees and being carried into the heart of Europe. Much like there was nothing to stop Tories joining Labour for £3 and voting for Corbyn.

Now it turns out the vast majority of people who voted for Corbyn were genuine Labour supporters, but some were indeed Tories playing silly buggers, and there was no way of telling them apart. I have no doubt that most of the stream of humanity are genuine refugees and economic migrants, but some will be ISIS, and again there is little chance of telling them apart.

An ideal recruiting serjeant for ISIS is Assad murdering a man's relatives whilst the West does nothing. Or fleeing to Europe and finding razor wire fences and tear gas, or getting to Germany and meeting far right protests and no jobs. We have and are continuing to give plenty of reasons for them not to like us. Refugee camps are the least worse option.

Divine Octavious,
I don't think there's huge differences between our views on this issue, I support sensible security checks on refugees, I support the plans of wealthy "western" nations to resettle large numbers of refugees and think the USA should take a decent number of refugees.
Australia, with a population of about 30 million is taking 20,000 refugees, the USA with a population of ? is taking ?

If the USA matched our commitment, they'd resettle approx 150,000 to 200,000 refugees, that would have a few rednecks go ballistic

Plus our experience is similar to that of the Europeans, the problem is "home grown" terrorists, young idiots whose actions break the hearts of their parents and usually it's the parents who are the immigrants and who have been good hardworking taxpaying citizens.

We don't have to import possible Islamic terrorists when we have so many home born and grown Christian terrorists already in the US. The latest in Colorado at the abortion clinic killed three and wounded more before surrendering so he can have his trial to gain more publicity for his "views." Timothy McVeigh and company from the Oklahoma City bombing were in the US Army and didn't get noticed beforehand. None of them would have been stopped by immigration blocking and screening.

There is an international obligation to take in refugees. Those fleeing for legitiamte reasons - and the risk of being killed in Syria is a legitamte reason.

Also, guess what bombing doesn't help? The case for peoPle to not flee.

Bot that i think Daesh or Assad are good groups who should be supported, but i also don't think that of Saudi Arabia and we ( the US ) supports them...

@ Randomizer

That a road safety scheme outside a village school will have little impact on motorway traffic accidents is not a reason not to have it. Your argument fails for the same reason.

@ Ora

"Also, guess what bombing doesn't help? The case for peoPle to not flee."

You guess wrong. Whilst bombing by itself doesn't win territory, what is does achieve is pinning IS down. An IS army hidden in bunkers or surrounded by human shields is an IS army that isn't making gains and putting thousands more under its tyranny. The key goal is combining bombing with a realistic land campaign, which will prove tricky. But a land campaign without air support will be a disaster. Bombing is vital.

Are you being deliberately obtuse Randomizer ?
With appropriate security checks you will NOT be importing terrorists with the refugees. You've acknowledged that most problems come from your own citizens who are radicalized by domestic extremists misusing Christianity or Islam.
I'd also agree with the divine Octavious, strategic air power is an essential part of any military campaign.
Sure the military campaign isn't a perfect solution, but it's a damn sight better than sitting on your fanny chit chatting. It's impossible to reason with the fanatical hardcore, like rabid dogs they have to be put down.
We have to have a multi faceted response.
Genuine humanitarian help for the refugees, an effective military campaign against the hardcore fanatics in Iran and Syria, anti radicalization programs domestically et al
Remember the axiom, Evil prospers when good people remain silent, so there's a responsibility on moderates to engage in the debate.

"The key goal is combining bombing with a realistic land campaign, which will prove tricky. But a land campaign without air support will be a disaster. Bombing is vital."

Ok, you have a point regarding bombing pinning down fighters. But a land campaign without bombing is a perfectly viable strategy - it merely requires a land force to do the job - Daesh have demonstrated this by being there in the first place.

But if you're actually planning a land campaign, who is going to provide the troops? The Syrian Army and Free Syrian Army are both already engaged; as is Hizbulah and some Iraqi militias (ignoring the Kurds here, as they have no international sponsor) Does Iran/Turkey/Saudi Arabia plan to do any more than fund these militias? Does Russia/NATO?

As far as i can tell, there is no land campaign planned. Russia plans to push Assad into a position where he can retake territory held by non-Daesh rebels - presumably hoping to crush Daesh later when the west wants that. In the meanwhile more refugees will he created by this civil war - Assad and anti-Assad forces will push for territorial gains, and bombing will make more places unlivable.

In the short term no bombing campaign promises to reduce the number of refugees. Eventually, IF territory can be taken, then an air campaign might be worthwhile. Is France now sending in troops (while Ireland pretends to be neutral and sends peacekeepers to Mali to relieve the French troops stationed there and allow them be deployed elsewhere on a NATO mission...) is Turkey being pushed to help end the civil war? (As opposed to bombing the one neutral party - who while abandoned by Assad haven't declared against him, so they can still make peace if Assad were to win this civil war - and yes, we should talk about Turkey, as they have the second largest army in NATO, about a third of it is sitting on the Syrian/Iraqi border)

http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/09/world-begs-us-military-force-syria-bitch-later/

The point being that the human cost of stopping all refugees is far greater than the risk of a terrorist attack happening because a terrorist masqueraded as a refugee.

Not a regular contributor to this forum, but after reading the post by randomizer here, I felt I must comment. His attempt to conflate the so called Christian Terrorist & the current IS terror network is just ridiculous. While there have been a few attacks on Planned Parenthood over the past years by the occasional wacko, the fact that he felt the need to go back over 20 years to the Oklahoma Bombing to support his statements is telling.

To my knowledge, nothing since Oklahoma has shown any planning or sophistication that is routine for the Islamic terror attacks. This fact alone disproves his thoughts on "Christian Terrorists" in the U.S.

blah blah blah...

^ don't worry folks, he's just warming up.

It's like singing your scales before your big song...

HE'S BACK

Thank god.

All hail! All hail!

We're not worthy ?

The difference between Christian terrorists and ISIS is the lone wolf vs organized terrorist groups that were more common in the 1970s in the US and Europe. The problem is the US has historically had a poor record against both types.

During WW II, the US built interment camps for Japanese-Americans but didn't for the Germans. Great Britain did inter Germans on the Isle of Man and had police interview German immigrants and those of German descent. This was more successful in Great Britain than here.

Current plans in the US fail to stop those already here as US citizens that become radicalized and those coming across the borders as illegal immigrants. It's a PR stunt that does nothing against both types of terrorists.

Yeh half of the US at the time had German ancestry.