Refugee Crisis Straight Talk

By Stephen Lendman

September 09, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - Official accounts from Washington and European capitals along with duplicitous major media reports suppress what’s most important to know.

Volumes are written without a single explanation of why a refugee crisis exists in the first place, what should be done about it, and most important, how to prevent future ones.

Millions fleeing troubled lands aren’t migrants. They’re refugees and asylum seekers – desperately seeking safe havens anywhere out of harm’s way.

Washington bears full responsibility for the gravest refugee crisis since WW II – because of its devastating post-9/11 wars. Resolving the problem isn’t rocket science.

It’s as simple as declaring peace, stopping US wars, ending its support for ISIS and other takfiri terrorists, establishing effective transition policies, and caring for displaced people humanely until they’re able to return home, adjust to a new environment on their own or go elsewhere.

RT International interviewed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. He correctly blamed America for refugee crisis conditions.

“It is Europe that has to deal with the disaster caused by the US, because it is Europe that is now taking in thousands of migrants and they don’t know how to cope with this situation,” he said.

By deception, (America) invaded (Afghanistan), then (Iraq), the cradle of civilization – and razed it to the ground. Now it is literally split into thousands of parts and engulfed by terrorism in its cruelest form” because Washington wanted to steal its oil and exploit its people.

Who bombed Libya! Who took the lives of more than 100,000 Libyans! Who is now bombing Syria,” Maduro stressed!

Who financed the terrorists that are now seeking to destroy it. The US has caused a real disaster, chaos, and now it wants to cause chaos in other regions of the world.”

Britain’s Labour leadership frontrunner Jeremy Corbyn blasted David Cameron – calling his response to the Syrian refugee crisis (the worst one globally) “wholly inadequate.

Images of a dead child washing up on Turkey’s shoreline reflect the horrors of Washington’s imperial wars – endless ones taking millions of lives, displacing millions of survivors fleeing for safety, enduring extraordinary hardships few can comprehend, and treated with deplorable callousness most everywhere they arrive.

Tory leadership failed, said Corbyn. Britain granted asylum to less than 300 Syrian refugees since January 2014.

Cameron dismissively says “I don’t think there is an answer that can be achieved simply by taking more and more refugees” – while his complicity with Obama’s wars creates more of them.

Corbyn calls it Britain’s “duty under UN law, but also as human beings, to offer a place of safety, and play a role internationally to share our responsibilities, and to try to end (ongoing) conflict(s)” – ones Britain complicit with Washington wage.

On September 4, Human Rights Watch (HRW) listed “five steps to tackle (the) refugee crisis:

1. Establish safer legal ways to aid desperate people – helping them avoid the horrors of hazardous journeys, “dangerous routes and unscrupulous smugglers.”

2. Fix “the EU’s broken asylum system.” Different polices among member states created a dysfunctional process.

3. Institute “robust search and rescue operations” sustained as long as needed.

4. Establish a “permanent relocation (policy) to share asylum seekers.”

5. “Develop a list of ‘unsafe’ countries whose nationals…need international protection.”

HRW omitted what’s most important. Declare a universal commitment to peace and stability. End US imperial wars. End European involvement in them. Hold Israel accountable for slow-motion genocide against Palestinians.

When swords are turned into plowshares, refugee crises won’t exist. Instead, Washington’s solution to everything is war, endless conflicts for wealth and power, turning planet earth into a dystopian wasteland – or maybe destroying it altogether.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. - His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” - http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html - Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. - Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. - It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PMCentral time plus two prerecorded archived programs.