Obama’s Refugee Legacy It took all of 10 days for the great moralist to criticize his successor.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-refugee-legacy-1485822609
If you had 11 days and the “over,” you lost. We’re referring to the bet on how long it would take Barack Obama to criticize his presidential successor. For the record our wager was 30 days, but then we always expected more from the former President than he delivered.
Mr. Obama couldn’t even wait until he finished his post-inaugural vacation before he had a spokesman issue a statement Monday afternoon reporting that the former President “is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country” against President Trump’s refugee order.
“Citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake,” added spokesman Kevin Lewis. “With regard to comparisons to President Obama’s foreign policy decisions, as we’ve heard before, the President fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion.”
No one doubts that, but then Syrian refugees became a global crisis in large part because Mr. Obama did almost nothing for five years as President to stop the civil war, much less help refugees. Here are the number of Syrians his Administration admitted: fiscal year 2011, 29; 2012, 31; 2013: 36; 2014, 105; 2015, 1,682. Only in 2016 did he increase the target to 13,000, though actual admissions haven’t been disclosed. Mr. Obama also barely lifted a hand to help resettle translators who worked with GIs in Iraq or Afghanistan.
We oppose Mr. Trump’s refugee order, but it takes a special kind of gall for Mr. Obama and his advisers like Susan Rice to lecture anyone about “American values” and refugees from chaos in the Middle East.
Comments are closed.
