Response to Liz O'Donnell's—We must embrace desperate people as Europe fails those fleeing war

Letters to the Editor

Re:    Liz O’Donnell, ‘We must embrace desperate people as Europe fails those fleeing war’ The Irish Independent (Sept. 23, 2016, 2:30 AM). [http://tinyurl.com/h7fch9u]       

In your September 23 issue, your columnist, Liz O’Donnell, wrote: “This [situation] is a total denial of refugee rights under international law. What dispute can there possibly be about the status of civilians fleeing the six-year-long Syrian war? There is no dispute.” Actually, there is some dispute. Several pages earlier, in the very same issue of The Irish Independent, your foreign correspondent wrote a news article titled: Refugee (16) plotted bomb attack for Isil. (See http://shr.gs/0m4jthJ.) There is no common, coherent narrative to be drawn from these two articles: refugees as the endangered, and refugees as the danger.

All that begs the question if some of these people coming to Europe’s shores are what they claim to be. Are they escaping “refugees”? Or are some something else—genocidaires, war criminals, partisans in naked religious strife, and other irregular combatants—who are trying to flee their own homelands (perhaps, which they themselves helped to destroy) before justice and/or retribution catch up with them? Of course, if that is who they are, they are bringing their rather unique skill set with them. And they are bringing it—here—and to—us.

Seth Barrett Tillman

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SethBTillman ( @SethBTillman ) 

Seth Barrett Tillman, Legislative Veto & Line Item Veto—Overturning INS v Chadha on Originalist Grounds, The New Reform Club (Sept. 25, 2016, 5:49 AM). [here]