Let Syrians Settle Detroit

Detroit, a once great city, has become an urban vacuum. Its population has fallen to around 700,000 from nearly 1.9 million in 1950. The city is estimated to have more than 70,000 abandoned buildings and 90,000 vacant lots. Meanwhile, desperate Syrians, victims of an unfathomable civil war, are fleeing to neighboring countries, with some 1.8 million in Turkey and 600,000 in Jordan.

Suppose these two social and humanitarian disasters were conjoined to produce something positive.

Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan, a Republican, has already laid the groundwork. In January 2014 he called for an infusion of 50,000 immigrants as part of a program to revitalize Detroit, and signed an executive order creating the Michigan Office for New Americans.

Syrian refugees would be an ideal community to realize this goal, as Arab-Americans are already a vibrant and successful presence in the Detroit metropolitan area. A 2003 survey by the University of Michigan of 1,016 members of this community (58 percent of whom were Christian, and 42 percent Muslim) found that 19 percent were entrepreneurs and that the median household income was $50,000 to $75,000 per year.

What confidence can we have that traumatized war refugees can be transformed into budding American entrepreneurs? We cannot know for sure. But recent evidence of recaptured children from the clutches of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda and victims of violent crime across five continents reveals that they become more active citizens than similar compatriots who have not suffered from these traumatic events. In the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan, Syrians, despite psychological scars and limited resources, have set up 3,500 shops, stores and other businesses.

Via: Weasel Zippers

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[CARTOON] Obama’s View

Via: California Political Review
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Doug Schoen: Obama Opts to Delay and Diffuse

In Tuesday’s address President Obama didn’t change any minds. And he certainly didn’t offer any answers to the litany of questions from congressmen, senators, commentators and everyday Americans that have been posed since the President came out in support of a military strike in Syria.

“A diplomatic resolution is always preferred over military action, but what would that resolution entail, and who will broker it?” Sen. Orrin Hatch said in a statement after the speech.

Sen. Pat Toomey said that, “the president’s presentation today leaves a lot of unresolved questions. I will continue seeking more answers before deciding whether to support a military intervention in Syria.”

Indeed, President Obama did not make the case that any military strike would have any consequential impact on degrading the chemical weapons the Syrians have now acknowledged exist. 

And he didn’t make a specific case about what a military strike would achieve beyond speaking in generalities about the arguable serious need to retaliate in kind for the chemical attack that occurred on Aug. 21st.

Via: Newsmax

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OBAMA CROSSES RED LINE

By now it should be obvious that whenever the U.S. interferes in another nation’s politics in the name of “human rights,” that that is only a pretext. So it is in Syria, as Obama prepares to plunge America in a war with that nation, and, inevitably, its allies. The United States’ stated reason for intervention, as articulated by John Kerry, is that Syrian President Assad used chemical weapons on the rebels, many of whom are jihadis — including terrorists, rapists, and cannibals – and thus violated their human rights.

Kerry is certainly consistent. Earlier he worried about the “human rights” of Nigeria’s genocidal Islamic terrorists, Boko Haram, while ignoring their victims — thousands of slaughtered Christians and destroyed churches.

And this is the point: when the human rights of others, such as Christian minorities, are being grossly violated — specifically by the Islamists and jihadis that Obama has enabled and empowered, in Libya, Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere — then there is no U.S. talk of intervention. Indeed, there’s’ hardly any talk at all, sometimes not even perfunctory condemnation. Other times, the White House makes jokes about Muslim persecution of Christians, for example, concerning the recent spate of church attacks in Egypt.

It is therefore unsurprising that Obama is ignoring the fact that there is strong evidence, including from the victims themselves, that gas attacks in Syria are the work of al-Qaeda-linked terrorists. After all, who used chemical weapons on who is irrelevant to the U.S president. Based on pattern and precedent, what matters is apparently finding an excuse to support the jihadis.

In Egypt, for example, after millions of Egyptians, supported by their military, ousted the Muslim Brotherhood — which was violating the human rights of others, especially Christians – the U.S. government, far from simply leaving Egypt to work out its own internal problems, continues interfering, agitating, and threatening on behalf of the Brotherhood.

Thus while Obama claims that Assad crossed the “red line” by reportedly using chemical weapons, it’s well to remember that, in fact, it is Obama who continues crossing red lines, as the Egyptian military quite literally declared, when it recently sent the Pentagon a message saying that Obama’s consistent support for terrorists is “crossing the red line.”

Via: Human Events

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