Charles Krauthammer says that while he doesn’t support Republican governors who proclaim Syrian refugees are unwelcome, ”they deserve some respect, a lot more than the president gave with his preening address he gave yesterday.”
“Remember, he’s the one that decided against the begging, the advice, recommendations of all of his top advisers, to do nothing at the beginning of the Syrian civil war,” Krauthammer said on Tuesday’s Special Report. “He could have established easily, a safe zone. The way that we did for over a decade in Kurdistan, in Iraq. It wouldn’t have cost boots on the ground.”
“And he decided, because he didn’t want to sully his reputation as a man who ends war and doesn’t start them, he denied them,” Krauthammer continued. ”So now he’s attacking people who are worried about the danger to the very people Obama abandoned. And forced into refugee status.”
Krauthammer floated his own proposal:
Given the new circumstances, you allow the women and the children and the men over 50. As you did in the past. But you’re extra-careful, extra scrutiny for the men of fighting age, the ones who do this stuff. And for each of them, you require a positive vetting, not just the absence of a negative one.