The Mule and tte 2x4

The world is now getting the message about the Syrian refugee crisis, but the mule needed a few blows to the head with that large piece of wood to hear it. Those blows have included story after story about the loss of “boat people,” and, of course, the heart-wrenching photo of the dead toddler in the red shirt washed up on a beach.

But this is not exactly a new problem, and it’s more than just about Syria. The UN has been reporting on the enormous scale of the Middle East refugee situation for years, perhaps one of the worst in our memories. Millions have been prompted to leave their homes. What’s different now is that local “coyotes” have been selling seats in substandard boats. Some have sunk. Others have made it to various European shores, with the refugees receiving varying degrees of welcome.

In Syria, it started in 2011, when the ultra-thin-skinned Bashir al-Assad decided he couldn’t put up with a relatively small number of demonstrators protesting conditions in his country. For the most part, they weren’t even interested in removing him from power. Years before that, in fact, there were news stories about what a progressive leader he was. But his response to the unrest was to turn the country’s army against his own people. I still remember the two brave CNN reporters, both women, who were on TV night after night reporting from the shelled cities, and the late Stanford fellow Fouad Ajami providing his comments about the dire situation to Anderson Cooper. The West did very little more than shake its head.

Then there were the reports that Assad’s army was using chemical weapons, and President Obama drew a “line in the sand,” which sounded very good – but did it sort of say that the use of conventional weapons before that to kill hundreds of thousands was OK? You be the judge. And then the Russians said, back off, we’ll handle this. BTW, I wonder how many refugees the Russians are taking in these days.

Some of the EU countries are less than happy about having to deal with this. By contrast, Germany welcomed tens of thousands just last weekend – more asylum-seekers than the country accepted during all of 2007. Germany may accept as many as 800,000 before all is said and done. So far, the U.S. has taken in about 1,500, but pressure is mounting for us to do more.

No, we aren’t to blame for this problem, but we do have some responsibility to help. We did virtually nothing in Syria, and maybe way too much in Iraq, and haven’t really followed through in Libya. But there are lots of people needing help, just as there are after a natural disaster like an earthquake. And it’s time we stepped up to do our share – not assume the entire burden, just our share.

While I’m not into animal abuse, the mule has to wake up sometime.