President Obama has never been a people person, as even his supporters agree. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why he has not bothered to tell the public why, exactly, his plan to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees is safe. It suits him to ignore documented and clear public anxiety and treat the issue as one trumped up by Republicans.
Instead of laying out the facts as only a president can, he delivered petulant and unpresidential remarks last week impugning the good faith of those who did not agree with him. To add to the insult, he did so from foreign cities, the very definition of taking politics “beyond the water’s edge.”
Because Obama chose to take cheap political shots instead of giving legislators cover to support his policy, he suffered a crushing bipartisan defeat in the House of Representatives. The good news, however, is that the House vote for a pause is not a rejection of refugees. It is just a pause, and Obama should view it as an opportunity.
A recent FOX News poll found that two-thirds of the public, a broad cross-section including black and white, all age and income groups, and a plurality of self-identified Democrats, opposes the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the United States. If the president wants to change those numbers, he can start addressing the public’s concerns. First, he should drop the condescending assumption that they are frivolous and deserve no response.
It’s not as though Obama has not paused refugee processing when he wanted to in the past. He did so in 2011, when his administration halted all Iraqi refugee resettlements for six months. It was a decision he could not have taken lightly. For unlike the current holdup, which might at worst consign some people to a slightly longer stay in a safe U.S.-funded refugee camp, his decision actually did result in at least one Iraqi who had helped the U.S. being assassinated while waiting for refugee status.
The reason Obama halted the entire refugee program was that an Iraqi refugee who had been let into the country in 2009, Waad Ramadan Alwan, living in Bowling Green, Ky., turned out to be an al Qaeda bomb-maker responsible for killing several American soldiers. His involvement with al Qaeda was confirmed by his fingerprints on a bomb trigger that American forces had retrieved in the field. After this discovery, Alwan was caught up in a terrorist sting operation. He and a relative had plotted to ship arms to al Qaeda in Iraq and to assassinate an Army officer stateside.
One hopes that the Alwan saga was enough to make U.S. officials strengthen the screening process substantially, adding more input from the available military intelligence that had previously been missing, and that it is now watertight. But all on its own, the story demonstrates that current fears among two-thirds of the public are not irrational, even if they should not indefinitely override America’s role in sheltering to those fleeing terrorism.
Will Obama’s response be more cheap shots, or good-faith leadership? He must begin taking public opinion seriously or he will lose it for good. He needs to address public fears honestly and explain what has been done to prevent another Alwan from reaching America.
If it helps to allow a brief pause, and perhaps to add a few extra safeguards to the process as well, he owes at least that much to his current countrymen, to say nothing of future refugees who may never be admitted if he makes the wrong choice now.
