Solutions Evade : Adopt a Firm Resolution to Remove Syria's Murdering Tyrant

"What else can we do?"
"You are welcome in Croatia and you can pass through Croatia. But go on. Not because we don't like you, but because this is not your final destination."
"We have a heart but we also have a brain."
Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic

Syrian migrants and refugees chant as they march along the highway towards the Turkish-Greek border at Edirne on September 18, 2015 (AFP Photo/Bulent Kilic)

For many Syrian migrants and those coming from elsewhere in the world of Islam the issue is escaping the immediate dangers that surround them from the fallout of civil war and the prospect that Islamist jihadists forging a new expanded territory for their caliphate will kill them. In fact, it is far more likely that the Shiite Alawite government troops of Syria's Bashar al-Assad would score the deaths of the fleeing Syrian Sunnis than the militias of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The Islamic State is focused on slaughtering Shiites, Christians, Kurds and Yazidi minorities whose ethnicity and version of Islam they regard as marking them as unfit to live. Islamic State has given inspiration to other jihadist groups, from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Iraq to Libya, and its stretch of influence is growing apace, in lock-step with the panic among potential victims to escape the finality of fateful death. But the Syrian regime has killed more civilians than ISIL.

And then there are the hordes in equal number flooding out of disadvantaged areas of South Asia, the Middle East and Africa, from Yemen to Eritrea and beyond, escaping both bloodshed caused by sectarian war and Islamist jihad, and economic privation. Among them are those whose desperation is acute, but also those who simply recognize an opportunity to join a tsunami of refugees so large that their purpose in seeking economic advantage is not so readily discernible.

Since nothing on Earth is ever as simple as we might hope situations to be, the flood of haven-seekers is complicated by the covert presence of Islamists hoping to gain the advantage of infiltration into Europe to pursue their own inimitable destructive ends in the rush for asylum. All of this is obvious enough, as the European Union wrings its hands in despair over how to respond. The simple solution would be to start by decapitating the monster of official death-dealing.

Removing by all necessary force, Bashar al-Assad from Syria's presidency of a ruined country would be issue number one, followed by the timely and complete destruction of Islamic State, al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran's ambitions. That would of necessity entail engaging Russia, needless to say, by turning Moscow's own persuasive gambit inside out and then persuading China that surrender to the same persuasion that led Moscow to finally abandon Assad would work for it as well.

In the meantime, southern Europe is left to fend for itself as, like the proverbial deck of cards, one refugee-bludgeoned nation after another slams shut their borders, blocks bridges, shuts down trains, and builds desperate razor-wire fences, hoping against hope they will succeed in blocking the tens of thousands converging in search of haven. Those tens of thousands becoming themselves increasingly rage-filled and crazed with resentment.

There are times when wise discrimination is required, and this is certainly one of them. The refugees in their tens of thousands mean to reach Western Europe, Austria, Sweden and Germany primarily. Women and children should be absorbed swiftly, given haven, shelter, medical attention and food. Men accompanying their families comprising wives and children should be given entry. Single, unattached men should be held back, and after a search of their papers either declined or placed in waiting camps.

Too many of the single, young men posing as refugees are economic migrants, are anxious yes, but for a future that has been denied them in their countries of origin whose perilous financial state impacts their entire populations. Too many of the single, young men begin to prey on the fleeing women and girls, persecuting and molesting them. It is also they who resort to violence-engaged frustration as their assurances of refugee-entitlements are disappointed.