The Refugee Blame Game

Assigning responsibility for foreign policy debacles is a popular game. In the 1990s, there were all kinds of questions about "Who Lost Russia?" as it descended into the authoritarian Putin-ism we see today? There was the hand-wringing about who was responsible for the terrorist attacks of 9/11? Had the Clinton Administration taken its eye off the ball? Why did the U.S. intelligence community fail to detect the plot before it happened? What about the response? Why was the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction so completely flawed? You can find a set of answers to things swirling around 9/11 in the 9/11 Report, but it also generated more finger-pointing.

Today's search to assign blame concerns the humanitarian crisis flowing out of parts of the Middle East, especially Syria, literally washing up on European shores. Whose fault is this crisis? The New York Times is asking the same question today in Ross Douthat's piece titled "Who Failed Aylan Kurdi?," the Syrian 3yr-old whose lifeless body was plucked of a Turkish beach by authorities after he drowned trying to get to Greece. Who's fault is Kurdi's death? Douthat's piece is less about who created this mess than it is about the responsibility to deal with a humanitarian crisis now that it's so obviously here. But what chain of events caused Kurdi's death? Can anyone or anything actually be blamed?

We want to blame someone for a long list of outrages we see around us. But whom shall we blame? The fact is, I am increasingly unsure.