I am not sure how it feels to be in the US right now; I would imagine it feels far away, and you feel safe. I don't feel in danger, but I am certainly aware that I could be. I don't foresee Stuttgart as being an ISIS target, but then again, you never know. But I am not going to change the way I live my life to "protect" myself. Of course if one avoids events, train stations, and airports, you lessen your chances of danger, but then you are just doing what these animals want: giving in to fear. That is what these people, if we can even call them that, thrive on. They declare to do all these acts in name of Allah, but in my opinion, they are doing it only for the sense of power it gives them. It is a great human tendency to promote your own agenda by declaring it as inspired by religion (hmm hmm, politicians).
So now the questions is, what do we do in response to these attacks? I like the French response of bombing the crap out of them, quite frankly. Contrary to American stereotypes of the French being sissies, they actually have a pretty decent defense system, and it would appear they're going to put that to work. We are all still waiting to see how the US responds, but so far I am not impressed. It seems to me that we are going to wait until there is an attack on US soil to do anything again, although my hope is that the West will join together to fight the terrorists.
I must say that I'm ashamed of the reports that so many US states are refusing refugees. First of all, the US is only taking 10,000. Let's put that into perspective: that is approximately 200 for every state. Nothing. Stuttgart, a city of 600,000, is taking 11,000 Syrian refugees at the moment. More than the entire US.. that makes sense. Some may say that Germany is overcompensating, but so far, they are managing (Wir schaffen das!). Of course there will come a breaking point, one country can only handle so much. Anyways, 10,000 is not many at all. Is it possible there is a terrorist hiding among them? Of course, we would be naive not to think it could be so. But do we really think we don't have ISIS extremists already there? In the Paris attacks, it seems only 1/8 was a fake refugee; the others were EU citizens. If they hadn't had the one refugee, they would have managed, or found someone else. My theory is that ISIS just wants to show that they can sneak someone in. They don't actually need to, there's enough support already there. How many people have left to go fight after just being influenced by the Internet? Let's not kid ourselves into thinking refugees are the only way these people are going to get into our countries.
Furthermore, it is much harder to get into the US than it is to get into Europe. US refugees are vetted before they arrive, and there aren't thousands arriving by boat every day to complicate the process. The EU is so inundated with refugees right now, without having a proper standard protocol to deal with it, that it is a real crisis.
It is so easy to forget that the reason the US was founded in the first place was as a refuge from religious persecution. Over the centuries, many tired, poor, huddles masses have fled to the US in different waves. This one is different because the people are not white and Christian, but we are a land of freedom and opportunity, so that shouldn't matter. These are in the end, people, people fleeing from horrors most of us have fortunately never had to experience. I have met several of them, both as schoolmates and neighbors, and all were very nice, respectable people, simply trying to protect themselves and their families. And we think the right response is to shut them out? And worse, many (most) of the ones protesting the loudest against refugees also claim to be Christians? I can simply not imagine that Jesus would be anti-refugee. As I recall, the Bible says to do for the least what we would do for Him (Matthew 25:40). I bet you wouldn't tell Him to go back to his war-torn country.
Food for thought.
Ciao for now,
Kathleen Powers
