OPINION:
Barack Obama is blowing past all signs of caution on the left lanes of the road of American politics. That’s a dog-bites-man headline that by now is common knowledge. He no longer cares what Americans think of his leadership. His “my way or the highway” handling of the Syrian refugee crisis, which could endanger the homeland, seals it. Though he gave Iran’s stony-faced mullahs all they wanted and more in his nuclear deal, he has dispensed with even pretending to accommodate the concerns to several governors in his scheme to settle thousands of foreign refugees on their soil. Flinging insults is more fun.
In the Philippines last week, President Obama brushed off the legitimate concerns of more than 30 governors, including some within his own party, that in light of the terrorist attack in Paris, welcoming an additional migrants from the Islamic State’s burgeoning caliphate poses a danger to American citizens: “Apparently they are scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America,” Mr. Obama said of Republicans.
“At first, they were too scared of the press being too tough on them in the debates. Now they are scared of three-year-old orphans. That doesn’t seem so tough to me.”
The president forgets that governors of both major parties speak not simply for themselves, but for their constituents. It’s the regular folk on Main Street who must absorb the impact of terror when it erupts in their midst, as it did in Paris. As commander in chief, Mr. Obama has an obligation to protect 320 million Americans. After seven years in office, he’s clearly considers it done and has moved on to his real interest, globalism. The United States is not big enough for him. Forcing open barriers to refugees, despite the possibility that ISIS terrorists could be hiding among them, is of a piece in his drive to separate the nation from its exceptional past and usher in a post-modern era to fulfill the left’s long-standing rallying cry: “Workers of the world unite!”
Contrary to the president’s assertion, the majority of the refugees, in news photographs and television video is not composed of “widows and orphans,” but healthy and well-fed young men. At least two of the Paris murderers were reported to have arrived in France among Syrian immigrants, and a female suspect died during a police raid several days later. She was no widow.
Careful screening of arriving immigrants can minimize risk, but screening is only as good as the background records law enforcement can access. Syria has been aflame for four years — reliable data on refugees emerging from a war zone is unlikely, according to FBI director James Comey: “If someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them.”
Taking security steps to guard Americans from danger does not demonstrate a lack of compassion for the downtrodden, it’s simply common sense. Refugees, particularly widows and orphans, who can be cleared through using existing databases can be given priority. Military-aged men who cannot be cleared should be held out until they can be, or sent home. A national leader willing to endanger his people is a sad story of incompetence in high places.
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