A Turkish gendarme prepared to carry the body of Aylan Kurdi, 3, who drowned off Turkey’s coast on Wednesday. (Photo: Turkish News Agency)
What’s wrong with this picture?
In the past year, America has taken in 1,000 Syrian refugees out of millions.
A county clerk in Kentucky, who is being exploited by a lot of people for cynical political purposes, is now receiving even more media attention than a presidential candidate, who is louder and more obnoxious than a drunk with a lampshade on his head, while millions are being forced to flee their homes “over there.”
This goes on while our President is taking “selfies” with a TV dude called “Bear” and all the presidential wannabes are avoiding the humanitarian crisis in Syria and the Mideast like the violent plague that it is.
I do not have any idea what to do about the violence out of Syria that has left an astounding 11 million people displaced the past four years–and nobody else seems to know how to stop it without making it worse.
But I do know that somebody in leadership positions in Washington ought to be focusing our attention on the fact that America has taken in a mere 1,000 refugees from “over there” in the Mideast.
Maybe they don’t have to focus attention on it because so many Americans seem to think that lives “over there” don’t matter much anyway because “all they do is kill each other, so let ’em have at it.”
That’s the attitude of so many people I know personally and people you no doubt know, too–including people who are so rabidly opposed to abortion because of the sanctity of life.
Maybe this powerful picture and the story of the 3-year-old boy Aylan will personalize the crisis in the Mideast and, now, in Europe and elsewhere, enough for us good-hearted American people to respond in some real and compassionate way.
But so far, the Kentucky clerk is the big attraction in our country’s endless media circus, overshadowing the drama over Tom Brady and the NFL Commissioner in “Deflate-gate.”
See here for the story of a Syrian boy who had a name: Aylan Kurdi.
I read of many people who say the US should have done more to help Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany in the 1930s – and generally everyone agrees the American government didn’t do nearly enough. How is this situation different? People in need are people in need. Why does the benefit of hindsight make it so much easier to sit back and say, “Yes, we should have done more,” while at the same time no one wants to show that they’ve learned from the past and make an effort to curtail ongoing tragedies? It makes no sense at all to me.