Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

The Al Hol refugee camp is clearly something like hell on earth. I don't think it reasonable to imagine that a coalition of Western countries will intervene on moral grounds. We're unlikely to say, "It is intolerable that children are living this way." nytimes.com/2019/09/05/opi…

Western countries--certainly, their duly-elected policymaking apparatuses--seem collectively to have concluded Syria's so beyond redemption (including any babies and kids born there) that it bears no thinking about, beyond sighing, "How awful." nyti.ms/2MVhFty

The attitude is shameful, but let's take it as given. There is no support, anywhere in the West, for doing what's *morally* right, which is, obviously, everything in our power to rescue these children and bring them to the healthiest, most loving environments we can design.

They need safe, stable, loving, homes with adoptive parents who are supported by loving communities that understand what these children have suffered; they need a great deal of competent, specialist care from childhood trauma specialists, psychologists, pediatricians.

Meaning, for the most part, they need to be in "Western countries." But (at least according to this report), Westerners want nothing to do with this: Many think these babies and children are destined to grow up to be terrorists. They are afraid of them.

In the words of the report, they think these babies (literally, we're talking about newborn babies and small children) are "ticking time bombs."

This is probably a natural aversion: it stems from the knowledge that kids *do* often grow up to resemble their parents.

The part I don't understand is this: If you think the babies are "ticking time bombs" now, what do you imagine they'll be like after they've been raised by terrorists to become terrorists?

The idea that "terrorism is in their genes" is superstitious nonsense. The idea that kids tend to take after their parents and adopt the culture they're raised in is not. if you raise kids in If you raise kids as Swedes, in Sweden, they'll be quite Swedish.

If you raise them as Americans, in America, etc. If you raise them as terrorists, in this hellish refugee camp, they're very likely to become terrorists. Common sense.

So why don't people see that this isn't just a moral problem--it's a security problem?

We need to get those kids out of there and into something resembling a normal environment. Just letting them rot in there is not a solution: The ones who survive hunger and disease *will* grow up.

Trump is absolutely right to say that European countries need to repatriate these children. The adults? That's a harder problem. I understand the concern that many can't be prosecuted for their crimes because the evidence against them wouldn't stand up in court.

No one wants these women in their societies, unless they can be locked up forever in a high-security prison--one where they aren't able to speak to the other prisoners, because you don't want their ideology spreading.

I also understand why they might feel squeamish about executing them extrajudicially right in that camp--although this approach has been used for their husbands.

But Trump is right to say Europe must take its citizens back, or otherwise secure them.

And so very, very wrong to say, "We've achieved our objectives in Syria and there's no reason for our military to be there."