Hijacked by politics
Published November 20, 2015
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Roy Cooper[/caption]
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, November 20, 2015.
Refugee hysteria is bringing out the worst in politicians.
North Carolina’s attorney general, Roy Cooper, could have taken a position for reason and decency, but the Democratic gubernatorial candidate joined the Republican incumbent Wednesday in calling for a halt in the Syrian refugee program.
“As chief law enforcement officer of North Carolina, I support asking the federal government to pause refugee entries to make sure we have the most effective screening process possible so our humanitarian efforts are not hijacked,” Cooper said.
Our humanitarian efforts have been hijacked — by politics.
Republicans prodded Cooper earlier Wednesday to take a stand on the refugee question, and he did. The wrong stand.
As chief law enforcement officer, he should have expressed outrage at the threats being delivered to resettlement agencies Church World Services in Greensboro and World Relief in High Point and to the few dozen Syrian refugees who have found homes in the Triad. Should these innocent people, and the caring professionals and volunteers who serve them, be terrorized by hateful extremists who are stirred up by so-called leaders?
The country is being swept by a wave of irrational and in some cases vile rhetoric cast by politicians. Among the worst was the statement by the Democratic mayor of Roanoke, Va., who justified his call for a halt to the refugee program by invoking President Franklin Roosevelt’s order to imprison Japanese Americans in internment camps after the Pearl Harbor attack.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump Thursday said he’d consider registering American Muslims in a special database and requiring them to carry identification that notes their religion. His competitors are vying with each other to offer the most outlandish proposals.
McCrory has been relatively muted, but there’s no doubt about his political motivation. He’s using his anti-refugee stance to appeal for campaign funds, yet he’s so disinterested in the actual policy debate that he skipped a governors’ conference call with the White House — and then issued a statement saying it hadn’t changed his mind. Sure, why listen to other points of view when your mind is made up?
It’s disheartening that Cooper calculated he should take the politically safe side of this issue. It required courage to speak against the fear-mongering, and he didn’t find it.
President George W. Bush did have the fortitude to say the right things just a few days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself,” he said on Sept. 20, 2001. “The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.”
That was one of Bush’s finest moments as president, and it helped to quell the sort of hostility that could have been aimed at Muslims then but is seen directed at refugees today.
President Barack Obama is trying to show principled leadership. Who else will? Americans deserve better than crass political opportunism.
