Sen. Rand Paul came up with an interesting analogy in an attempt to argue against refugee resettlement yesterday, saying that Iraqi refugees seeking resettlement in the U.S. “when we won the war” is “sort of like us winning the revolution and our Founding Fathers decide to take political asylum in England.”
Paul, who has used the “we won the war” logic while discussing Iraqi refugees before, fought back against criticism of his legislation to stop the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S. in an interview with Breitbart News, saying it’s “ridiculous to say it has anything to do with hate” because “you’ll never meet someone who is more fair-minded than myself, who believes in individual rights of every individual no matter what their religion is.”
Paul recalled the arrest of two Iraqi refugees in Kentucky who were accused of sending weapons to Al Qaeda in Iraq, the sole case of terrorism charges among the 745,000 refugees admitted to the U.S. since the September 11 attacks. (None have been accused of planning domestic attacks). “My question at the time was why did we admit 60,000 Iraqi refugees when we won the war?” Paul asked. “I thought you got political asylum if you lost the war.”
“Here’s my point also is that if they were pro-Western, which many of them probably are, they would have been the best people to rebuild Iraq in a reasonable fashion,” the Kentucky Republican added. “It would be sort of like us winning the revolution and our Founding Fathers decide to take political asylum in England. You know, it just makes no sense at all.”
Among the many obvious faults with Paul’s analogy is that, as Think Progress has noted, “Many of the Iraqis seeking asylum are people who helped the United States military or contractors as translators and guides,” a somewhat different relationship than the American revolutionaries had with England.
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