Syrian refugees aren\u2019t wanted here. That\u2019s the message from more than 30 governors who all claim it\u2019s their first duty to ensure the safety of their citizens. If that\u2019s our response to last week\u2019s terrorist attacks in Paris, then America is not the land of the free and the home of the brave. We\u2019ve become prisoners to fears of a world we\u2019ve chosen not to know. <\/p>\n
Gov. Bill Walker was one of the few governors that refused to follow this knee-jerk reaction. And that\u2019s exactly what it is, because although the attacks shocked us all, the tragedy in Paris hasn\u2019t changed any of the facts on the ground there or in Syria, Iraq and the rest of the war-ravaged Middle East. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo one who paid attention to the attacks in Paris last January should have been surprised that something like this would happen somewhere in France,\u201d writes George Packer in the New Yorker. In between he rattles off a host of other signs that indicated ISIS wasn\u2019t finished there. And he ended the paragraph by stating, \u201cwith the U.S. leading the air campaign against ISIS for more than a year \u2026 no one should doubt that America is in the group\u2019s crosshairs, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Packer, however, wasn\u2019t sounding a warning against allowing refuges to come here. They\u2019ve got to go somewhere. But the majority of America\u2019s governors are essentially saying \u201clet others take the risk.\u201d That\u2019s similar to the fear-inspired logic expressed by President George W. Bush during the Iraq War. \u201cWe\u2019re taking the fight to the terrorists abroad\u201d he said, \u201cso we don\u2019t have to face them here at home.\u201d <\/p>\n
That argument resurfaced after last January\u2019s attacks in France. But it\u2019s a defensive strategy which isn\u2019t exclusively ours. As Juan Cole wrote in The Nation magazine last winter, Muslim academics believe the Koran \u201csanctions only defensive war.\u201d He was writing mainly in response to an Atlantic article, titled \u201cWhat ISIS Really Wants,\u201d where among his 10,000-word analysis, author Graeme Wood explained how ISIS has extrapolated the defensive war interpretation to include attacking civilians in the west.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a stretch to equate ISIS\u2019s murderous strategy as defensive. After all, most Americans agreed that the Syrian civil war was none of our business. But we made it ours when ISIS moved into Iraq in August 2014 and the U.S.-led coalition began bombing them. That\u2019s when ISIS responded as Wood described. It\u2019s their way of taking the fight to their enemy\u2019s home turf. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m not defending ISIS, but the current public outcry over the risks posed by Syrian refugees only makes sense in the context that the Paris attacks surprised us. The fact that Wood\u2019s 9-month-old article has suddenly become the most popular piece on The Atlantic\u2019s website supports the conclusion that most Americans think we\u2019re free to ignore the world\u2019s conflicts until the battles wash up near our shores. <\/p>\n
It was understandable not to know what was going on in the world before America became a global empire. National news crawled across the landscape back then. But burying our heads in the sand today is a form of freedom we\u2019ve chosen in order to have more time to shop till we drop, watch football and endlessly follow our friends on Facebook. <\/p>\n
The freedom not to know comes with a serious price tag, even in the relatively remote homesteads of Alaska. Just ask Hank Lentfer. When he was 23 years old, he thought owning enough acreage in Gustavus was all he needed to keep the rest of the world away. It didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n
Among Lentfer\u2019s reclusive joys was the seasonal migration of Sandhill Cranes that graced the Gustavus skies. But after a decade of avoiding troubling news about their distant habitat, he realized that unrelenting progress threatened the serenity the cranes brought to his family\u2019s secluded home. So he began to speak out. Educating himself was more work than he wanted. \u201cNot until I add my voice to the chorus,\u201d he writes in his book Faith of Cranes, \u201cdo I know I am not alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tuning out the world\u2019s problems until disaster strikes is the recipe that\u2019s produced today\u2019s mass hysteria over Syrian refugees. Just as it did 14 years ago, it\u2019s left us dependent on our politicians\u2019 rhetorical pledges of protection. That makes us neither free nor brave. And we\u2019re doomed to this path until many more sacrifice the freedom not to know and join the chorus of worldly citizens seeking a safer planet for us all. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Rich Moniak lives in Juneau and is a retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Syrian refugees aren\u2019t wanted here. That\u2019s the message from more than 30 governors who all claim it\u2019s their first duty to ensure the safety of their citizens. If that\u2019s our response to last week\u2019s terrorist attacks in Paris, then America is not the land of the free and the home of the brave. We\u2019ve become […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-28907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28907"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=28907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}