[Airbornelawyer]

Originally Posted by Guy

"Common sense ain't all that COMMON"...

"Education and research is only GOOD until a fucker shoots at you"...

"I ain't never seen or heard of a religion, that advocates flying a plane into a building...MUSLIMS are the only ones that have ever did it"!

Stay safe!

Based on comments in other threads as well as this, I'm trying to figure out if this was directed at me. Are you assuming that I'm just some pussy intellectual who has all my knowledge from books? Fuckers have shot at me, and I have a scar a few millimeters from my eye socket to remind me that if I had turned a fraction of a second later, I'd be blind in one eye or worse. I've seen more people die and I've filled more body bags than I than I care to remember, including, by the way, those resulting from fuckers flying a plane into a building (actually two buildings).

And Doc, TR, Colonel: with all due respect, this thread was posted in the "Insurgencies & Guerrilla Warfare" forum and titled "Islam gets a foothold in Vermont". It is somewhat disingenuous to say that it was merely about the problems of assimilating an immigrant/refugee population. And American history is full of refugees coming here to escape persecution in their homelands, from Huguenots to Hmongs, and including many of my own ancestors. I personally helped Afghan refugees resettled here in the 1980s.

But by the way, I actually agree it is not necessarily a good idea to settle the Meshketians here (especially in a place like Vermont without the culture or infrastructure for assimilating, as Col M notes). Unlike, for example, the Hmongs, Afghans from the 1980s or Iraqis forced to flee northern Iraq in the late 1990s, the United States has no direct connection with or obligation to the Meshketians. As a country built by immigrants and refugees, we should afford them or any others the opportunity to legally immigrate, assimilate and become part of the American way, but I don't think taxpayer money should be expended to subsidize them (although it should be noted that unlike "regular" immigrants, refugees admitted under the Refugee Resettlement Program get off the dole relatively rapidly - their overall employment levels reach the national average within a few years of arriving).

The problem with immigration in this country is not the immigrants, whatever religion they happen to profess or whatever race or color they are different from their neighbors. It is the the PC left's hostility to assimilating immigrants (on even something as basic as learning English) and the left's desire to keep immigrants on the welfare dole to keep their welfare bureaucracy's power. And Colonel, I'm sure you know better than all of us how entrenched that PC leftist clique is Vermont.

If this thread had gone into Lounge Discussions and been about that immigration/assimilation issue, we could have had a good discussion without Islamist terrorism being relevant. It would not have been much of a debate, I suppose, though, since most of us seem to agree on the immigration/assimilation issue.

But regarding the potential for terrorist recruiting, consider this: if the Meshketians, or any Muslim refugees, were resettled in a place more hospitable to immigrants than Vermont, like, say, Northern Virginia or New York City, would they assimilate more or less rapidly? I live now in New York City, and I see an infrastructure that keeps refugees from assimilating. My Russian Jewish immigrant ex-girlfriend had a great deal of difficulty with English and with working in a Manhattan law firm because she spent almost all of her free time with a Russian-speaking clique in Little Odessa in Brooklyn. And would these unassimilated Muslims be a better target for Islamist terrorist recruitment in these "immigrant-friendly" climates? The terrorist cell infrastructure (like the organized crime infrastructure) thrives better in these larger, yet insular, communities. It is probably much easier for Islamists to recruit here where you have people who from mosque to work to school can cocoon themselves in their little world.