History and Gov. Inslee

History and social studies were my favorite subjects in school, and I majored in history in college. When I see mass fear of people who are Muslim, it makes me terrified.

• Anti-semitism after WWI brought us the Holocaust.
• Colonialism brought us the Trail of Tears.
• The bombing of Pearl Harbor* brought us the internment of Americans of Japanese descent. 
• And for Americans of African descent, we brought them here as slaves, and then treated them with years of racism, which included "separate but equal," lynchings and now mass incarceration.

I don't think I am wrong to compare the situation in Syria to those previously mentioned.  So far, 100,000 Syrians have died in their civil strife. 

Thanks to Washington's Gov. Inslee for being a voice of reason in this conversation on Syria refugees. As you said in The New York Times, national security is an issue and we can address that.  But what about happens when we look at the 99% of Syrians who are being terrorized by a small group of their fellow citizens? I think of my 12 year old son eating nearly 3/4 of a pound of wild caught sockeye salmon for dinner. What does a 12 year old Syrian boy have for dinner, besides hopelessness and despair?

We look back at history and say what could have been done to stop the Holocaust, the Trail of Tears? Why didn't someone say something, do something?  In fairness, many did call this out, but there wasn't a mass outrage. The people who called it out, said it was wrong, were outliers.

This is the same moment now, where future generations will look back, either with pride that we did the right thing or wonder why no one spoke out.

I recall reading about the US methods of interrogation of people they suspected of dangerous international activities prior to the post-9/11 methods of torture.  I wish I had the reference, but the US would bring in these young men, and tell them that the US could provide their aunt needed dental surgery or their mother surgery to remove a tumor.  They would bring in the insurgent's relatives, and provide them with modern medical care. This was not Marathon Man dental care where Laurence Olivier tortured Dustin Hoffman, but real, best in the world, medical treatment for their families. The insurgents were eternally grateful, and were then willing to work with the US State Department.

The point of the story about US not torturing people is that we as Americans have done the right thing to fight terrorism. There are better ways than torturing political prisoners and turning back refugees. We can do it again.

* Note that my family of German and Italian descent did not get interred when Germany invaded Poland or bombed England, nor when Mussolini sided with the Germans.