All Turned Around on Syrian Refugees

SAN DIEGO -- Because of mistakes, miscalculations and missed opportunities, President Obama's foreign policy has gone from bright red lines to little orange cones.

No wonder Obama is trying to change the subject by seizing on the blunders, bluster and blind spots of Republicans. Luckily for the White House, the GOP is only too happy to oblige now that the conversation has turned to the complicated question of whether the United States should follow through on plans to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next fiscal year.

In September, 73 House Democrats wrote a letter to Obama declaring this figure too low and demanding that the White House accept 100,000 Syrians. After all, said the lawmaker who initiated the letter -- Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island -- the refugees are mainly "women and children fleeing violence."

Women and children, eh? Is this a bad time to mention that one of the people who died in a raid by French authorities of terrorist hideouts in Paris was a female suicide bomber?

The State Department has said that "military-aged males unattached to families" make up only 2 percent of the estimated 2,000 Syrian refugees admitted to the United States since the start of the Syrian civil war in March 2011.

So there might be nothing to worry about.

But, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, over 20 percent of all Syrian refugees are military-aged males.

It's time to worry.

Either the Homeland Security Department is very good at vetting refugees so that fewer "military-aged males" are allowed in, or the Obama administration is again getting cute with language by using the phrase "unattached to families" to skew the numbers. As if a male who was attached to a family would never help organize, or participate in, an act of terror. Where's the evidence for that?

Still, it is refreshing for the American people to see our president alert and awake when talking about terrorism. He is finally talking tough, making threats and staring down his enemies. It's too bad that Obama seems to think his real enemies are Republicans -- from the more than 30 governors who say Syrian refugees aren't welcome in their states, to White House hopefuls who the president insists offer nothing more than a "spasm of rhetoric," to members of Congress who want a moratorium on taking in more refugees and tighter restrictions on who earns that classification.

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