Refugees from the Middle East

A new commentary every Wednesday — November 4, 2015

A horrified look at the refugee crises as winter approaches

I would understand if you clicked the delete button, without reading further.

In my 88 years, I've seen many terrible situations, but nothing since the Second World War (1937-1945), when an estimated 60 million people, three-percent of the World population died, can compare with what is going on now in a region encompassing Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq; all across the Middle East and now engaging all of Europe. According to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, some 50-million persons are displaced from their homes in that region and every day 42-thousand more join the exodus. Nine million Syrians alone, have fled from their homes. The fact that an increasing number of the displaced are coming from all parts of Africa—all the way from Nigeria to Somalia—is augmenting the outflow.

I have seen devastation, first hand. A great city, Manila, "The Pearl of the Orient," once home to four million Filipinos and thousands of US citizens, was leveled by September of 1945. Only one other national capital, Warsaw, exceeded the devastation suffered by Manila. One could not place their one's hand upon any remaining structure in the seat of government or the vast downtown business complex of Manila without covering a bullet or shell hole. A few thousand Japanese marines disobeyed General Yamashita and refused to declare it an open city, after the U.S. 6th Army landed on the Lingayen Gulf in northeastern Luzon, above Manila, on January 9th of that year.

But even in the middle of winter, even in the midst of a hurricane, there was some food and millions were preparing their fields and paddies for the spring rice-planting season. In December and January, the weather, with the exception of a huge hurricane, in November was benign. Only in the highlands of Luzon was there a slight chill in the middle of winter.

The difference then was that thousands of ships from the United States were capable of bringing enough food to feed an Army that soon exceeded 100,000 military personnel. By August of 1945, a fabulous supply line, established at a terrible cost of American lives and treasure, had been established all across the Pacific and there was a stream of food and medical supplies that kept pouring in. By then, America had already begun to respond to the starving millions in Europe almost from the instant peace was established there. Soon, there was the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe.

What is going to happen to millions of refugees when it starts to snow and freezing weather strikes in Europe, despite all that is being done by the beleaguered countries in their path? The media and the public has a terrible appetite for the latest cheap thrill. I've noticed that there are fewer stories, even though the situation regarding the refugees is worsening every day.

Mother Nature has not been kind to this hemisphere for the last decade and perhaps the worst is till yet to come, but today, here we are, basking in the southwestern desert sunshine, many thousands of miles removed from what is going on in the Middle East and Europe, watching the crises build there, as winter approaches. Nearly all civil services are malfunctioning in Jordan and Lebanon. At least 7.6-million people, most striving to escape, are stuck there. It has been estimated that one out of every four persons still there is a refugee. Always an reliable signal anywhere there is a general breakdown in society: the garbage in the streets becomes mountainous.

When are we Americans going to act to help Europe—and one must praise the leadership Germany has exhibited—and all of the good people of good will who are greeting the desperate masses descending upon them?

What are the adherents of Islam, the supporters of the Red Crescent, including the fabulously rich in the oil states doing? As far as I can see, little or nothing. Does not the Quran have nothing to say about feeding and sheltering your starving and freezing brothers and sisters?

Well yes, we Americans and most especially our service personnel, have exceeded far more than the rest of the world deserves, and there is understandable tendency toward isolationism, but we are all members of the same tribe of those who suffer all along that terrible path where millions suffer privation; where many are about to suffer even more— and die from the oncoming cold.

-Phil Richardson, Observer of the human condition and storyteller. "He goes doddering on into his old age, making a public nuisance of himself." - Joseph L. Menchen

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