I can't tell you how much I appreciate Ms. Hakim's take on why Poles have been keen to help Ukrainians but not Syrians. While it would certainly have been better for them to help both, it's tragically natural for humans to sympathize more closely with those they have important things in common with. Given their closeness to Ukraine, and their shared history of being subjugated by Russia, Eastern Europeans' eagerness to help Ukrainians is not surprising.
The problem with chalking such favoritism up to racism is that most countries don't have America's nation-of-immigrants history and ethos. I love that my country has that history, and I want us to take in refugees from around the world. But Eastern European countries aren't like that. I have no doubt some Poles, Romanians, Slovaks, etc., are indeed motivated by bigotry to reject Middle Eastern and Muslim refugees. And there are many ways in which Poland's PiS government has been bad for human rights. But Solzhenitsyn was right: "the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."
The thing for which I can never forgive George W. Bush was diverting his and our attention from the war that we HAD to win in Afghanistan to a war of choice and personal vendetta in Iraq, and using a lie to do it. I fault him and that decision for all of the horrors that have befallen Afghanistan since, and for all the negative repercussions on us and our NATO allies.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate Ms. Hakim's take on why Poles have been keen to help Ukrainians but not Syrians. While it would certainly have been better for them to help both, it's tragically natural for humans to sympathize more closely with those they have important things in common with. Given their closeness to Ukraine, and their shared history of being subjugated by Russia, Eastern Europeans' eagerness to help Ukrainians is not surprising.
The problem with chalking such favoritism up to racism is that most countries don't have America's nation-of-immigrants history and ethos. I love that my country has that history, and I want us to take in refugees from around the world. But Eastern European countries aren't like that. I have no doubt some Poles, Romanians, Slovaks, etc., are indeed motivated by bigotry to reject Middle Eastern and Muslim refugees. And there are many ways in which Poland's PiS government has been bad for human rights. But Solzhenitsyn was right: "the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."
The thing for which I can never forgive George W. Bush was diverting his and our attention from the war that we HAD to win in Afghanistan to a war of choice and personal vendetta in Iraq, and using a lie to do it. I fault him and that decision for all of the horrors that have befallen Afghanistan since, and for all the negative repercussions on us and our NATO allies.
Afghans seem to be wired as needing government oppression as they are not evolved enough to leverage freedom.