The army of hungry, desperate, battle-scared people from the Middle East and northern parts of Africa making a beeline for Europe might not have shamed the European countries had the West under the leadership of the United States not embarked on the self-proclaimed mission to spread democracy in what they said were uncivilized, despotic lands. The European Union might not have needed to deal with another gargantuan problem even before overcoming its debt crisis had it not added to the mayhem in the Middle East and North Africa.
That history lies in ruins from Afghanistan and Iraq to Syria and Libya is another story. Suffice to say the Levante, the cradle of human civilization, first lost its archeological masterpieces to ignorant soldiers and is now at the mercy of fanatic Islamic State extremists, who recently blasted two ancient Roman sites in Palmyra.
Perhaps a graver tragedy is that, even after failing on all fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US and its NATO allies preferred to get mired in Libya and Syria to different extents, without even waiting to think what would be the consequences of the upheavals in those countries for EU countries.
Now, the EU is a house divided on the refugee crisis. German Chancellor Angela Merkel says, the refugees must be fairly divided throughout Europe, but British Prime Minister David Cameron is adamant that "taking in more refugees is not the answer".
The question is: If Cameron was not ready to accept refugees, why did he help unleash unprecedented bedlam in Syria, Libya and other Middle East countries? A war of words rages in the EU as Hungary and some other EU countries refuse to accept refugees and Greece is overburdened with more than a hundred thousand people fleeing the ravages of civil war in their own countries even as it grapples with its credit crisis.
The EU should have known that by virtue of being safe across the Atlantic, the US will not have to deal with any of the immediate human miseries that EU countries have to face because of the upheavals in the Middle East.
This lack of foresight and absence of humanity in the enlightened civilizations of Europe is at the root of the suffering of millions of people in war-ravaged Middle East and North Africa.
