And where they'll land, noooooobody knows....

Wait for the $64,000 Question at the end

The mass exodus of desperate refugees from the war torn regions of the Mid East (which is most of it) continues.  Men, women, and little children are running for their lives, carrying with them little more than the clothes on their back.  Over a million are expected to make it to Europe this year, but exactly where they will eventually call home is still up in the air.

Our Western sense of decency and compassion, at least mine, says we must help them.  We can't simply sit idly by when people are exhausted, hungry, homeless, and desperate.  To do nothing would be absolutely heartless.

But now we're told it's almost guaranteed that embedded within these migrants are terrorists.  The jihadists are certainly cruel and brutal, but they are NOT stupid.  I doubt many of the fearful refugees making the trek are carrying official paperwork, so it would be easy for a few hundred....thousand?....ISIS/Al Qaeda-types to sneak through, too, where they could link-up later with cells already in place in Europe or elsewhere.

Let's back up and review for a second.  What is the ultimate root-cause of all this mess?  IMO, it's Islam.  Have you seen a religion, in the modern era at least, that condones killing to this degree in the name of their Supreme Being?  That seems to be one bitter religion.  Shia vs Sunni....Wahhabi....Salafist....they're just out of control!  My understanding is they aren't fighting for economic gain, or territorial gain, but to conquer others in order to please Allah.

Sure, Christianity has had their dark periods, too....think The Crusades, and more recently in Northern Ireland and the Balkans and a few other places as well.  (I don't think you could include the Nazi era, Stalin's reign of terror, the Japanese atrocities in the Orient, or the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, etc, as they were NOT about religion.)  But looking at the big picture of modern world history, the brutality of Islam seems to be in a religious class by itself.

Of course not ALL Muslims are terrorists, far from it.  But the crazies are gaining momentum, and the rest seem to be becoming more marginalized.   Now ordinary, middle class, educated, (mainly young and impressionable) Muslims are drinking the jihadist Kool Aid, too.  The European Union is right now trying to decide how many refugees each member country should take in, and the US is also weighing in on how many should be admitted here as well.

The $64,000 Question

Considering the horrendous death, destruction, and panic that could be inflicted on the general population today by a terrorist attack, is it time to revisit "profiling"?  I know it's wrong to profile kids just because they're wearing hoodies, or because a minority drives through an affluent white suburb after dark, but the consequences of missing a jihadist plot as it's being hatched are quite different.  It's a tough question, and definitely a slippery slope.  How do you balance the rights of the many vs the potential harm that could be caused by the few?

Let's apply this to a scenario closer to home:  You're taking your son to begin his freshman year at college.  Due to a dorm SNAFU he's been assigned to a new room at the last minute.  You get the key and go to room 234 and find his new roommate already there.  

As you enter he and several friends abruptly cease their rather animated conversation, and you notice a scene on a laptop of an explosion or maybe a hooded man holding a huge bloody knife, before it's snapped shut.  The friends leave without making eye contact, and after Mohammad introduces himself, leaves as well.  He has no room decorations, no pictures or posters on the bulletin board, and the textbooks on his shelf suggest he's a chemical or maybe electrical engineering major.

Do you give your son a good luck handshake, slip him a couple hundred dollars extra "fun money" and remind him to behave himself, then mosey back home?  Or do you consider that maybe a semester back at the local junior college might not be such a bad place for little Timmy after all?

What would you do?  

S

Good bye Robin, and more things I don't understand

"What's the difference between a tornado and divorce?  Nothing.  Either way, someone's losing a trailer." Robin Williams

The world has lost a very, very funny man.  By all accounts Robin Williams was a good man who truly seemed to care about others.  He was also a man who they say was suffering from depression, and had issues with addiction to drugs and alcohol in his past, too.

I don't mean to sound uncompassionate, but I don't understand depression or addiction.  I don't have an "addictive personality" myself and I'm not close to anyone who does.  Not my wife, or my kids, or any of my friends or family.  I understand they are legitimate diseases, but I suppose I just live in a small, probably naive world with other like-minded naive people.  I've never been exposed to those dark things.

I don't understand how the brain works.  I've never taken a formal course in psychology.  Why would someone so talented, someone able to light up a room when he walked into it, someone who could travel where he wanted, do whatever he wanted, probably meet whoever he wanted, have to resort to drugs or alcohol, and eventually suicide?  I just don't get it.

In my little pea brain I can't see what he had to be depressed about.  When people have an empty pantry, hungry kids, and no money, I can see them being desperate and depressed. When people (who want friends) have no friends, I can see them being depressed.  When people are cold and homeless and don't even know if they'll survive the night, I can see them being depressed.  Thankfully most of us reading this right now don't (I'm guessing) have those problems. 

And drugs and alcohol....again, I don 't get it.  If I'm healthy and fed and clothed and housed, why would I want to screw it up by abusing myself?  If you have enough money to afford booze or drugs in mass quantity, I'm guessing you should be smart enough to find something a lot more fun to spend it on than booze or drugs.

It's one of my great shortcomings....I just don't understand the abstract.  Last night when we heard the news that he was dead K said incredulously, "But Robin Williams should still be alive."  Then she asked,  "How do we know that's true?  How do we know this wasn't meant to be?"  

All I could do was sit there, my mouth open, and say, "wha...what?" Great, deep philosophical questions go straight over my head.  I see the here and now, the rocks and trees, not the what might have beens or the philosophical dilemmas of life.

If any of you are hurting or addicted or in mental pain, I wish I could help you, but I wouldn't know where to start.  Thank God there are people out there who can.

I'll never know what was going through Robin Williams mind at the end.  I'll never understand his addictions.  I do understand that a funny, caring man is gone.  Pity.

S

What's wrong with those crazy people?

What is it about Islam that makes their believer's minds short circuit?  Whether North African, Somali, Arab, Persian, Pakistani or even a Muslim American military doctor at Ft. Hood, TX, their minds often just seem to reject logical thought processes.  I've looked at it from every angle I can think of and the only common denominator seems to be their Islamic faith.

They just don't seem happy unless they're fighting each other or their neighbor.  "You covet my camel, you see my wife's big toe....I KILL YOU!"  A daughter somehow learns to read and write....heads roll, literally.  Want a job?  "I have a job.  I make bombs."

Now I'm wondering if being around them for all these years during this Age of Oil hasn't infected / affected our Western thought processes, too?  We somehow think they want American-style freedom and democracy.  We've set them up time and again, and they've squandered it every time.  Why can't we take a hint?

It seems to me our "problem" is we're a compassionate people.  We see pain and suffering and we want to help.  That's a good thing and I'm glad we're that way.  But to help someone they have to WANT to be helped.  I'm sure many Muslims do, but far too many others, perhaps even a majority, seem to want nothing more than to return to the 16th Century.  

Now the civil war in Syria has turned even nastier and we want to go and kick some bad-guy ass.  Look around, Washington....we're up to our eyeballs in Muslim dung now!  Lobbing a few cruise missiles into Syria might make us feel better, make us feel like we're doing something to help, but that's delusional.  

Why don't we just build a bonfire on the Washington Mall and shovel in a few billion dollars worth of greenbacks?  We could close the ceremony with a rousing chorus of Kum Ba Yah, too.  Yeah, that'll show 'em!

We need to face facts:  Nothing we can do is going to civilize them.  We need to treat them like our old, weird uncle we see at the family reunion once a year....say "hi", send them a Christmas card (they'll love that!), and then stay as far from them as possible.  We want to buy their oil, they need the money; that's business.  Otherwise, leave them alone to re-arrange their own rocks.

S