Mike Zapchek has made his case and I for one agree that the refugee program falls far short of ideal or is even acceptable. I was irked by the idea that some might balk at accepting the consequences of Western foreign policy with which Canada complied, predetermined since at least 1991 according to U.S. General Wesley Clark, when deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz told him Pentagon plans had ordered regime changes in Iraq, Syria and Iran.
Released Wikileaks cables testify that the U.S.-funded “peaceful Syrian opposition” with $12 million between 2006 and 2010. Some funds went toward anti-Assad media propaganda that informed the early protest movement and the rest directly to the jihadists they morphed into. In 2012, France and the UK effected the relaxation of the EU embargo to Syria in order to supply defensive arms, against international law, to the Assad opposition. In this effort, Saudi Arabia, which has publicly executed by decapitation150 people this year, offered $100 million, the U.S. an additional $14 million, and Germany $29 million. They then all claimed to be shocked by ISIS’s power and violence.
It is unlikely that the less well-off refugees will get the options the better and very-well-off will obtain in all of this. Some have even refused relocation in Slovenia, for example, because the average yearly income there is “only” $30,000 and they have their sights on the more affluent Scandinavian countries. So Mike Zapchek has a very good point: our funds should go to those refugee camps the poorer refugees are inevitably destined for. And I apologize for jumping to conclusions, but they were not prompted by his name or ethnic affiliations.
Doris Wrench Eisler, St. Albert
