@JustOneDad, um yeah, good luck to you and your friends on trying to assasinate the leader of a regime.
Some people deserve to be dropped in to a place like Syria to get a feel for what its like.
And how will your wife and kids support themselves when they are sent away? How about those Syrians where the husband is the main breadwinner and don’t have savings to fall back on?
@mcat2, your naivete boggles the mind.
The a Economist is good but sometimes it’s too good, ahead of its time. Like for example, it predicted the housing bubble in 2002 and the housing bubble actually bursted in 2008-2009.
The cause is pretty simple, the region is in major turmoil, the roots of which are many and complicated. There is truth to the fact that the US invasion of Iraq was partly to blame, the country we left after Hussein was unstable, and it allowed a power gap that a group like ISIS could exploit (not to mention that Sunni muslims, a minority in the country, felt powerless and ended up supporting ISIS, which is Sunni). Western governments are against Assad, the US in particular, because he poses a threat to Israel through Syrian support of Hamas and such, and when a rebellion started, the US supported the rebels, not surprisingly, which led to chaos, and again ISIS in the power vacuum took over. The migrants from Tunisia are fleeing what is basically a civil war after the “Arab Spring” everyone was enchanted by, others are coming from the mess in Egypt.
The other problem you have is that while ISIS is a major threat, you also have paralysis because regional rivalries stop the old “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. ISIS is Sunni, as are the Saudis, and in part they will be reluctant to fight them, especially since ISIS is right now fighting the Iraq government, which is Shia, as is Iran.
The reason people are leaving is easy, it is desperation, it is all well and good to talk about fighting ISIS, fighting Assad, but when you are living places that have been destroyed, where feeding a family is impossible, where there is no hope, how the hell do you fight? With what? What you are seeing is the cracks that have been there a long time opening up, we all talked about the horrible dictators in the middle east, and they were/are, but no one thought of the consequences of removing them. Anyone remember the horrors of the old Yugoslavia falling apart, the genocide and continuous fighting? The only reason we didn’t see there on a large scale what we see with ISIS in the middle east is that in the cause of Bosnia and such, outside countries acted to rectify the situation.
Lot’s of guilty parties. However, one thing to think about is when the US refused to take Hussein out of power back in the first gulf war, Dick Cheney made the comment that if they had removed Hussein, who would take over in the power vacuum that would follow, and how much further misery and suffering would happen? The inconsistent and conflicting policy in the region by almost everyone led to this kind of mess, it isn’t the US’s fault, it isn’t the fault of ‘military weakness’, it is a festering mess that has been allowed to fester for many years. Put it this way, even if we spend 2 trillion a year on defense, what good would it do? Our military was at full strength when we went into Afghanistan and Iraq, and look at the end result there, what a mess it was after the initial victory. Yes, ISIS is going to need to be stopped militarily, but it is going to take a multi lateral response and is going to involve a lot of things. It is going to involve trying to solve the Syrian mess one way or the other, it is going to involve containing ISIS and more importantly, figuring out how to shut down their financing. It is going to take a UN that hasn’t decided it is the cheering section for anything third world, and put together some kind of plan of action, which so far it has shown basically no response to ISIS or the refugee crisis. It is also going to take real leadership across the board, which so far no one has shown.
A video shows that Putin visited the Crawford Ranch.
Toward the end of this video, it shows Bush himself drove Putin, etc., to his ranch. You could rarely see a (ex-)President drives a car (wait a minute, it was a truck) himself, and was joking with a crowd by saying: “President Putin brought the rain to Texas. There is no better gift than the rain.” (It could be not safe if he ate Pretzel while he was driving. LOL)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qJB5qN1J3FM
It seems that the “supreme leader” of North Korea even dare not visit Russia and China recently, which were their country’s long time allies (their country’s existence was due to the intervene of these two “big daddy” countries during the Korean War.) So, if he dares to visit South Korea without worrying about his own safety during the visit, it will definitely be a big step forward.
Maybe we should blame the current president for withdrawn from IRAQ too early. Declared victory to please his base. Even his administration recently admit they didn’t have a complete strategy against ISIS and the US under estimate ISIS.
http://nypost.com/2015/06/09/obama-admits-he-doesnt-have-a-complete-strategy-for-isis/
Why did Laura Bush hold a flower? Mr. Putin did not take the flower from her. it seems she was trying to give it to them. Did they have troubles in communicating with each other?
Both of them seem to have dressed themselves very casually.
Well, this is a tangent.
(Back to Syria, do you think Assad, and the leaders of ISIS dare to visit a western country without any concern of their safety? I do not think so. So, the situation is bad by this measure - no mutual trust exists there.)
I don’t understand why Europe should shoulder this responsibility when the wealthy Gulf states which are closer geographically take no refugees.
The leaders of these wealthy Gulf countries are mostly not aligned with the interest of their citizens (thin layer of elite group who robs their countrymen of their fair share of the wealth.) They would not be so stupid to let these refugees in to jeopardize or even destroy their countries (or kingdoms?). They have never been “friends” of the general population of the Arabs, I think.
You can’t really talk about the current migrant crisis without considering forced regime change in Libya with no plan for that country’s future.
@DrGoogle, not intend to get into the politics: It is my observation that one of our parties tends to be too eager to start a war, and the other party tends to be extremely reluctant to be involved with any war mo matter what - so it likes to end a war as soon as it can (There is no interests for them in their POV, short-sighted or not.)
Their “bases” are indeed different. (e.g., which side tends to side with the interest of a large globalized business which needs to go out to the world to make the profit? Which side tends to groom those in this country who may vote for them generation after generation? You could clearly see this in their immigration policy: Who do these two parties like to bring in?)
“I don’t understand why Europe should shoulder this responsibility when the wealthy Gulf states which are closer geographically take no refugees.”
@TatinG Europe has no choice. The refugees are THERE. What do you propose it does with these tens of thousands of people? Put them all on airplanes, give them parachutes and drop them off over Saudi Arabia?
Europe does not have two large “ponds” to shield themselves from the “troubled areas” like we (US) do. If they have a choice, they would like to have oceans to keep these refugees out as well. (But the business leaders in Europe in the past imported many of them into their country. (Was it their “H1B” program to bring them in when the businessmen in Europe claimed it was a good policy for their country when the business was good? The US had imported slaves and thought it was a good idea back then too.)
Maybe the best strategy and lethal weapon that ISIS could rely on is just to create refugees, a lot of them. It could “destroy” the west.
Hum…
Migrants go back home; these people do not intend to and most will be living off of other countries in one form or another forever.
I find it interesting that the media has decided to falsely represent the situation using a transitory word, and even people who know the real situation get caught into using a misnomer to define the conversation. These are not migrants, these are immigrants who are here to stay.
Not sure there could be genuine discussion when from the get go the issue is purposefully ill-defined? Makes one wonder what else is being misrepresented in the background by politicians and policymakers?
Plenty media outlets and politicians are using words such as refugees. Let’s not look for conspiracy theories here. This situation is complex enough!
For gulf nations it’s a bit more delicate as I suspected,
I don’t understand why Europe should shoulder this responsibility when the wealthy Gulf states which are closer geographically take no refugees.
And how many ISIS jihadists are among migrants?
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikegiglio/isis-operative-this-is-how-we-send-jihadis-to-europe#.ndwYk39jD
Post #96, I think that’s what everybody worries about. The US said it could take up to 18 months to fully vest the immigrants to make sure they are not involved with terrorism.
I’m sure terrorists are trying to use this crisis to their advantage… but I bet they have more effective ways of getting to Europe than on leaky boats and on foot for hundreds of miles.
They can easily be in this crowd, how much more effective can you be.