Skip to main content

Dr. Ben goes to Jordan




In one of the more surprising moves of the early presidential nomination season, Ben Carson decided to go to Jordan to see what's really up with all these Syrian refugees.  It was a whirlwind trip, taking advantage of frequent flier miles, to try to give his sagging campaign some kind of Foreign Policy heft, as he has been roundly criticized for being woefully deficient in this regard.

The good doctor returned this weekend to tell us that the refugees just want to go home.  They don't want to come to America.  They are content to bide their time in Jordan, where they number approximately 600,000 at this point.  An additional 3.2 million Syrians currently reside in Turkey and Lebanon, but the busy doctor didn't have time to visit them too and further add to his first hand account of refugee camp life.

His comments are vacuous at best and only serve to further show how hopelessly out of touch he is with current affairs.  However, the two guys leading the GOP Iowa polls are no better, just more quick witted and able to dodge any hard questions regarding the numbers they throw around.  Here is Donald Trump trying to play off his comments that Muslims were cheering in the streets of Jersey City when 911 take place, citing all kinds of absurd numbers in regard to the amount of Syrian refugees planned to arrive in America next year.  For a change, Chuck Todd doesn't let him off the hook.

It's Ted Cruz who has the most to gain from Ben Carson's unraveling presidential campaign, as he is appealing to the same religious fundamentalists.  In another big show of braggadocio, the Cruz Missile vowed to introduce a Senate bill to stop any and all Syrian refugees from entering the country, ignoring the fact that one had already cleared the House, which places severe restrictions on the proposed resettlement of 10,000 such refugees in 2016.  It's too bad Dr. Carson doesn't have a similar bully pulpit.  He has to make due with improvised trips to generate the same clout among his faithful followers, who seem to be shrinking by the day.

All the Republicans have conflated the number of refugees.  In Trump's fiery Meet the Press phone interview, he tossed out all kinds of numbers from 10,000 to 250,000, claiming that no one knows for sure as none of these refugees are documented.  He, like his GOP brethren, blithely dismisses the two-year screening process that takes place, which thoroughly documented each and every one of the refugees applying for entrance to the United States.

It is not like Jordan or Turkey or Lebanon, where these refugees are flooding across the borders, escaping the civil war that has raged four long years in their home country.  Processing is weak, because these countries are literally having to screen millions of refugees.  As a result, the EU has worked out an action plan with Turkey to help ease the migrant crisis, which has taken a much greater emotional toll on Europeans.

Over 200,000 Syrian and Afghan refugees have flooded into Europe the past year, often with bitter political battles along the EU borders.  Poland is now calling for an end to the Schengen Agreement, although its citizens, like many Eastern European citizens, have benefited immensely from this free flow of travel across the European Union.

The White House has also been helping ease Turkey's financial burden in the refugee crisis, granting over $4 billion since the start of the crisis.  That's a hefty sum of money in FP terms, as we don't give that much money to Israel during a fiscal year. But, you would never know it to hear our GOP candidates, who give their constituency the impression that President Obama has opened the flood gates to Syrian refugees to the United States, rather than trying to stem the flow at the source by helping with Turkish resettlement programs.

I managed to call up all this information up in a little over one hour.  Imagine what one could do if he actually studied the issue by turning to reliable Internet sources and actually informing oneself on the Syrian refugee crisis?  It seems a small thing to ask of our GOP Presidential candidates, who are intent on being the next Leader of the Free World.  You don't even have to go to Jordan to find pertinent information.  The local library would suffice if you don't have an Internet connection of your own. The only downside is you wouldn't have nifty photographs to post on your website.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud.  -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!