Shunning refugees aids ISIS

The average Syrian (or Muslim from anywhere) no more wants to strap on a suicide vest and blow up an American cafe, theater, or airport than the average American does.

If we close our borders to Syrians desperately seeking escape from the brutal lunacy of ISIS on one hand and the equally brutal megalomania of Syrian President Bashar Assad on the other, we will prove to them that what ISIS says about Americans is true: We don’t give a hang about Syria’s misery. Nothing we could do would promote ISIS more effectively, or undermine our own security more surely.

The United States has a truly distinguished history of backing the wrong horses in the Middle East, notably including the shah of Iran, then Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Many of ISIS’s best weapons are of U.S. manufacture, sold to extremist Sunnis through Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to Libyan rebels, and to CIA-trained “moderates” in Jordan. This fact is not lost on Syrians whose families are now being murdered with them.

Today, in ISIS we reap what we ourselves have sown. So long as we persist in doing cowardly, shortsighted things rather than courageous, humane ones, the clutch of terrorism can only tighten around us.

Eric Went

Pullman