The same unnamed Syrian refugee that Sen. John McCain promoted during his effort to attack Syria, which eventually led to the rise of ISIS, is now being promoted to drum up opposition to a bill that would require the federal government to fully vet the Syrian refugees fleeing the destabilized region.
In 2013, when Sen. John McCain was pushing for strikes against the Bashar al-Assad regime, he travelled around Arizona with a troupe of Syrian refugees who supported his campaign for arming the Free Syrian Army. Over time, members of the Free Syrian Army joined ISIS and that groups’ bloodthirsty campaign has created hundreds of thousands of refugees.
This legislative session, after Arizona Governor Doug Ducey called for a temporary ban on refugee placement in Arizona, Rep. Bob Thorpe introduced HB 2370, which would require that the federal government ensure that refugees undergo a thorough criminal history, terrorism, and health background check approved by the state of Arizona.
The irony of the use of the same poster-child-type character to promote McCain’s war, and the refugees that resulted from it, is not lost on anyone.
McCain had raised eyebrows in 2013, when mostly republican attendees to his pro-Free Syrian Army town halls began to compare notes and pictures. While Arizona is a large state, and getting around would be difficult for anyone, it would be even greater for poor newly arrived “refugees.’ However, the refugees who kept appearing at McCain’s town halls spread across the vast expanse of Arizona did so thanks to McCain.
Those Syrians shouted down Christian Syrians who pleaded with McCain to leave the situation alone because at least – they claimed – under Assad – Christians would be safe. Two young Christian doctors at the Tucson town hall went so far as to claim that the atrocities that McCain used to justify his bloodlust were only optics.
Since then, ISIS has been especially brutal to Christians in the region.
Currently, the vast majority of the refugees seeking shelter in the U.S. are Muslim. Earlier this month CNSNews reported: “Five hundred and fifty Syrian refugees have been admitted into the United States since the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) carried out terrorist attacks in Paris last November, and of those, two (0.3 percent) are Christians.”
Related articles:
McCain’s pro-Syrian bombing roadshow (updated)
Thorpe says he is not trying to keep refugees out of the country. Fox10 reported that Thorpe said, “I don’t believe the federal government has he (sic) right to place people here without our knowledge.”
Most people would agree with Thorpe especially after the massive number of sexual assaults by refugees in Germany during the New Year holiday and the mass shooting in San Bernardino, CA late last year.
Most people that is, except Rep. Regina Rios, who like McCain, is using the issue to paint those who question the federal government’s role in creating refugees as ogres. Rios told Fox10 that Thorpe’s bill is simply a ploy to “score cheap political points;” something about which she and McCain know how to do quite well.
