Ben Carson On Fire With Great Plan To Leave Syrian Refugees Right Where They Are
now just hear me out
While you were stuffing yourself with Thanksgiving Tofurkey this weekend, sleepy human gaffe machine Ben Carson traveled to the Middle East to annoy and confuse people there instead of here. He dropped in on Syria and came back with a typically Carson-ian perspective that is at odds with both common sense and human decency: The refugees would just really really reaallllllyyyy like to stay in the refugee camps, thankyouverymuch.
[A]fter touring the camps and talking to aid workers, officials, and Syrians themselves, Carson said, “I did not detect any great desire for them to come to the United States. You've got these refugee camps that aren't completely full. And all you need is the resources to be able to run them. Why do you need to create something else?”
Why do you indeed? Throughout history, people have absolutely loved to stay in the indefinite detention-like hell of refugee camps rather than come to places like America to get jobs, apartments, and maybe a small television. But wait, sayeth the neurosurgeon! You just don't understand! These refugee camps really aren't all that bad, don't you see?
“It's really quite impressive when you go over there and see it,“ Carson added, noting the some parts of the camps even had schools, electricity, and indoor plumbing. He also insisted that the refugees were “a lot happier. They were quite willing to stay there as long as it takes before they can get back home.”
Where do we even begin to unpack the levels of stupid in this quote? Is it his blithe indifference to the idea that if "some parts" of the camps have schools, electricity, and indoor plumbing, the logical corollary is that some parts, you know, don't have those things?? Is it the fact that he's pretty sure that Syria will right itself in a few weeks or so and displaced people can just trot on back? Why choose??
Did Ben Carson come to this genius conclusion that people who are not Americans love squalor and awful conditions apropos of nothing? Haha nope of course he didn't. It's all about keeping out terrifying terrible terrorists, duh.
Carson also said that his visit gave him no new confidence that potential terrorists could be screened out of the refugee population, a process he recently likened to handling “mad dogs.”
We're sure the Syrians stuck in refugee camps were quite happy to hear that Carson thinks some of them -- or all of them? who can say? -- are mad dogs.
Now, let's not be too harsh on old Ben. He's not entirely intending to leave Syrian refugees to twist in the wind. He has a plan as to how Americans might help fund the camps in Jordan, which are facing a $3 billion shortfall. What plan sprang, fully formed like Athena, from the head of Ben? Just give them all our Halloween candy money.
“When I looked at the refugee camps in Jordan, there’s about a $3 billion shortfall annually,” Carson remarked. “That’s how much money we spent last year on Halloween candy.”[CBS' John] Dickerson pressed: “So, make the link between Halloween and the refugees for me? Are you talking about a national fundraising drive?”
“I’m talking about in terms of the amount of money that it would take,” Carson replied. “My point in comparing it to Halloween candy is to say that this is not a big deal.”
That ... doesn't really answer Dickerson's question, actually. Should we as a nation look forward to the return of adorable costumed moppets coming around with little boxes, a la UNICEF, asking that you throw down a few coins for Syrian refugees? This does not really seem like a terribly sustainable funding mechanism, but perhaps that is because we are not the former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. We are dumb liberals who believe that lifting people out of horrifying war-torn conditions and letting them come to countries, like these here United States, that are not living hellscapes, is a net good for the universe, but then again, what do we know?
