Refugee
Crisis Demands Coherent Foreign Policy
by Pete Hoekstra
IPT News
September 22, 2015
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Note: Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra is
the Investigative Project on Terrorism's Shillman senior fellow. This
article originally appeared at Newsmax.
 Perplexed Washington
establishment politicians fail to grasp the West's need to develop an
effective foreign policy in the Middle East to address the current refugee
crisis.
The U.S., largely through neglect, allows Islamists to inflict
unspeakable genocide against innocent men, women, and children.
The largely hands-off approach has resulted in hundreds of thousands of
families fleeing Syria, as well hundreds of thousands more internally
displaced persons in Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, and Yemen, to seek freedom in
Europe and elsewhere.
Under a misguided veneer of humanitarianism, some legislators are now
rallying to accept more of those seeking refuge without first addressing
the delusional policy that created the problem in the first place.
Continuing down such a path will only exacerbate the situation, as we will
find when Iran becomes an accepted player in world affairs.
Americans are compassionate, yet they understand that the catastrophe in
large part resulted from the 2011 U.S.-led NATO mission in Libya that
backfired. Choosing to arm and train the Islamist opposition against
dictator Moammar Gadhafi unleashed its most ruthless terrorist elements.
Once the U.S. and NATO walked away from Libya, a chaotic lawless state
in the soft underbelly of Europe arose. It exports weapons, training, and
ideology throughout North Africa and the broader Middle East, including to
the uprising in Syria that planted the seed of ISIS.
The administration in 2012 ignored its self-imposed red line as Bashar al-Assad
deployed chemical weapons against his people. The contingency plan to spend
$500 million dollars to train and equip so-called "rebels"
resulted in only 60 recruits, and nobody even knows where they are.
The overall feckless strategy against ISIS in Syria and Iraq enabled the
Islamist organization to expand its domain and drive out more religious
minorities.
Americans are frustrated with those in Washington who now advocate for
throwing our doors wide open as the solution. U.S. citizens are charitable
and want to help their struggling fellow human beings, but they want a more
constructive approach.
They want politicians to admit their mistakes, learn from them and
confront the evil at its source. Failing to chart a new course will only
lead to a more dangerous world.
America's bipartisan strategy for years has been to deny jihadists with
sanctuaries anywhere in the world from where they can plan, prepare and
train for attacks against the West.
Such policy largely confined them to remote caves in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, as well as in sporadic cells. Permitting them to control more and
more actual territory enables them to drive out more terrorized victims and
move closer to our shores.
ISIS will certainly take advantage of the West's disjointed immigration
laws to sneak some among their ranks to the U.S. homeland.
Say that only 2 percent of the 10,000 proposed refugees are radicals and
only 3 percent support their cause — note that a recent Pew Survey found
that 30 percent of Muslims are sympathetic to violent jihad — that 5
percent would be 500 jihadists let loose inside our borders.
Furthermore, how will legitimizing the nihilistic Iranian regime help
matters? The mullahs not only offer a well-documented record of global
terrorism and antagonism toward the West that stretches past decades, but
they assist in the Assad regime's campaign of terror against its people.
Does immediately gifting the Iranian mullahs more than $100 billion with
absolutely nothing in return really foster peace and stability in the
Middle East?
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Iraqis and Libyans agree with the
majority of the American people who oppose the agreement and are expressing
their frustration with their feet.
Finally what should really anger Americans are those 42 senators who
filibustered the Iran deal to cowardly avoid putting their names on record
as supporting it.
They will most likely be the first to demand that we open our doors to
the asylum seekers who have been, and will be, generated by their new
friend and ally.
The more intelligent crowd outside the Beltway wonders how any of it
makes any sense. America needs an understandable and pragmatic foreign
policy that offers real solutions to a real crisis that doesn't include an
endless stream of refugees into the West.
Otherwise, heaven help us because Washington certainly can't.
Pete Hoekstra represented Michigan for 18 years in Congress,
including as chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee. He
currently serves as the Shillman senior fellow at the Investigative Project
on Terrorism, and is the author of "Architects of Disaster: The
Destruction of Libya." For more of his reports, Go
Here Now.
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