OPINION:
Acts have consequences, and sometimes the absence of acting has greater consequences. This can be a hard lesson, and sometimes must be learned more than once. The waves of migrants threatening to swamp Europe are teaching it anew.
In a humanitarian crisis like the world has not seen since the end of World War II, 381,000 migrants have arrived in Europe this year. That’s up from 216,000 last year, and more arrive every day. Most are from Syria, 3 of 4 are men and thousands are children. The photograph of the pathetic little body of a 3-year-old Syrian boy, washed up on a Turkish beach after he drowned with his brother and mother, broke the hearts of everyone who has one.
Nevertheless, it’s a sad dilemma for Europe, too. “The more that Europe responds, the more it will reinforce the supply of migrants,” says Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations. “Europe is caught.”
No one knows what to do. The more the Europeans help, the more the crisis grows. Christian charity and Jewish ethics compel taking in the stranger (the Arab states have so far restrained any stray impulses to take in anyone), but there are limits. Hungary, which threatens to build a fence to keep trespassers out, warns the European Union not to impose sharing migrants across the EU. Pope Francis urges everyone to take in a migrant, and says the Vatican will take two.
Beyond that, however, there are limits to how willing Europe may be to swap its culture and traditions for the culture and traditions of the arriving masses, many of whom are Muslims.
Anyone who says these things out loud invites being called a nativist, a bigot, a racist and all-around bad person. Some people are saying them, anyway, just as Donald Trump is saying them here. Writing in the Times of London, Melanie Phillips argues that the flood of the displaced will “alter the cultural balance of the country forever.” Geert Wilders, the popular leader of conservatives in the Dutch parliament, calls the wave an “Islamic invasion” that “threatens our prosperity, our security, our culture and our identity.”
The migrant crisis in Europe has so far barely touched America, which must deal with migrant waves of its own, except for agreement to take in our “share” and demands to take in more. But the United States, and in particular the president of the United States, must share the blame for the crisis. Barack Obama authorized the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, prematurely withdrew American soldiers from Iraq, drew imaginary red lines in Syria that invited further chaos and brutality, distanced Washington from Israel, conducted a fine romance with the Muslim Brotherhood, and now makes a deal that guarantees an Islamic bomb in the Middle East.
Who wouldn’t run from all that? The “Holy Land” will continue to be an open sore on the globe, spilling its poisons from a stew of racial and religious resentment, defying the attempts of good men to resolve its ancient feuds and conflicts, but the globe’s only superpower cannot retreat from the responsibilities that come with such power. No president, and certainly not this one, can lead from behind. Leaders do not command from the rear.
And while they’re at it, the decision-makers among the elites should cool their contempt for those who must live with the consequences of disasters and catastrophes. Peggy Noonan describes them in The Wall Street Journal as people who live “in gated communities of the mind, who glide by in their Ubers.” These elites have bought their way out of the consequences they make, but do not share.
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