Compassion vs War Mongering

I cannot do this justice in the time I have to frame my thoughts.

This writing was stimulated by a former Kosovo refugee who pointed out that the E.U. migration wave has its base in the desire to survive.

The comments on the Washington Post article were driven by the fear that terrorists could be hiding in the migration wave.  But we have terrorists in our mix who are homegrown, and never migrated anywhere.  How does that fear overwhelm compassion?

These migrants are largely educated, have skills, and are driven by an overwhelming desire for the safety of their family and a desire to have a better life than the one they had wherever they are coming from.  How can we not have compassion for that?

I suspect many of those who lack this compassion, letting fear overwhelm it, are people who in general tend to vote for the GOP.  This lack of caring for the living and our ability to do something for them (how many of these believers say people like this should pick themselves up by the bootstrap and get motivated to earn a living) is similar to the desire to limit abortions.  They don't want to help the children once they are born if there is any need for public support, but they oppose abortion.

But all these migrants want is a chance to pick themselves up by the bootstraps.  Why wouldn't the U.S. support that as a matter of policy?

When we start a war and destabilize something, we do have an obligation to fix it.  We can debate how we do that considering the costs, but we should have some compassion for the people who are victims of that destabilization.


Link to Wash Post column