This status was posted by Allan Shapiro in response to the US's decision to only take in a small number of Syrian refugees by paralleling this instance to the post-WWII influx of Jewish refugees.
“Unfathomable numbers of refugees escape persecution in their native countries, fearing for their lives, only to end up in displaced persons camps in deplorable conditions, many getting very sick, unable to get into the country of their choice. And the US, hypocrites that we are, only takes in a tiny number of refugees.
Oh, you thought I was talking about the second-worst refugee crisis in modern history, the exodus from Syria and Iraq? Well, that would have been apropos. After the US screwed up IndoChina, we took 200,000 boat people as refugees in the early 80s. But, Bush I invades Iraq in a play for control of oil and to pressure the Saudis to allow him to station troops on their soil, outrage over the stationing of non-Muslim troops in Saudi Arabia leads to the rise of Osama bin Laden, Bush II botches what should have been a police action with international support and allows bin Laden to escape into the hills of Pakistan, Bush II and Obama turn the Afghanistan campaign into continual drone carpet bombing of Pakistan, ISIS rises out of the disintegration of Syria and breakdown of order in all but Kurdistani Iraq and then establishes a de facto state that brings back slavery, mass rape and other wonderful things, so, we can certainly say we did as much to mess up these new refugee's lives as we did to the South Vietnamese's, so we are certainly as culpable on this refugee issue as on the previous one--so I can certainly understand why you thought I was talking about Syria.
But no. I was talking about displaced Jewish refugees post WWII.
Think about it.”
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Allan Shapiro, ““Unfathomable numbers…”,” Museum of Everyday Writing, accessed April 25, 2024, https://museumofeverydaywriting.omeka.net/items/show/28.
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