Merkel refugee double down

I sat here yesterday in disbelief after examining the transcript from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent press conference in Berlin. OK, I guess I wasn’t completely shocked when I heard her double down on refugees, but it was still kinda stunning the way Merkel basically told people who had concerns to fuck right off. Even though I think the migrant flood she helped let into Europe has set the continent on a perilous path, I do have to give her some slight credit for standing up in the face of the fury.

Whichever way her gamble turns out (and I’m betting poorly), Merkel will be the one who has to own the entire thing

“Today, as in the past, I am convinced that we can do it — to live up to our historic task, which is a historic test in the age of globalization,” she said, in an attempt to reassure the nation after three recent violent attacks, two of them linked to the Islamic State. “We can do this.” 

Ms. Merkel, who had been on vacation in her summer home in the lake district north of Berlin, returned to the capital to give her annual summer news conference and laid out a nine-point plan that she said would strike the right balance between security and freedom. 

She deplored two recent attacks by men who had claimed allegiance to the Islamic State: an ax and knife attack in Würzburg by a 17-year-old refugee who said he was from Afghanistan, and a suicide bombing in Ansbach by a 27-year-old Syrian who had sought asylum in Germany. The two attacks “mock the country that took them in,” the chancellor said.

“All of this puts a great test before us,” the chancellor said of the attacks in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. “It tests our way of life, our understanding of freedom and democracy.”…

Ms. Merkel emphasized that “we are not in a war or in a fight with Islam.” She added, “We fight against terrorism, also Islamic terrorism.”… 

Ms. Merkel has come under pressure, at home and from European partners, for her willingness to allow hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter the country without being properly screened by security officials. Concern about who may have entered Germany among the 1.1 million migrants and refugees who crossed the border last year has been heightened after the attacks.

I actually agree with Merkel on some things. I don’t believe we should close all immigration, even from Muslim countries. I wrote about my feelings on the subject in the aftermath of the Bataclan terrorist attack. But letting in “refugees” from war-torn parts of the globe without proper screening is madness and Germany is paying the price as we speak. It’s not just any old part of the globe, either. This is overwhelmingly the place where the terrorism we face is coming from. Even if it wasn’t, letting people into your country without screening them is madness on the face of it. We shouldn’t cancel immigration from anywhere, because as corny as it sometimes sounds, I don’t think that’s who we are. Still, for fuck’s sake, we have to be smart about this shit.

Right now, we’re being anything but smart. And fools like Merkel continue to lead the parade of idiocy.

If you think things are going to get better anytime soon, I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. By the way, I mentioned how letting unscreened people into your country was insanity in the last paragraph. Well, the United States has been doing that for a very long time. Just wait until an ISIS jihadi who came here from Mexico completes an attack on American soil. The outrage will be at a fever pitch. Porous borders threaten many Western nations and we are only now beginning to receive the bloody receipts.

I really do hope I’m wrong and things improve markedly without massive bloodshed. I fear I am all too right, though…

(Here’s the 2010 quote from Merkel about German multiculturalism having failed, along with news on protests organized in reaction to Merkel’s press conference.)