{"id":7694,"date":"2014-07-23T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T15:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7694"},"modified":"2014-07-23T08:00:39","modified_gmt":"2014-07-23T15:00:39","slug":"the-amoral-nature-of-the-pawn-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-amoral-nature-of-the-pawn-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Amoral Nature of the Pawn Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online<\/a> – The Corner<\/p>\n

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Photo by HarryPotter and the\u00a0Sorcerer’s\u00a0Stone<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The humanitarian crisis on the border derived from four callous parties who used illegal immigrants as pawns for their own self-interested agendas: (a) Central American governments wanted to export \u201cexcess\u201d population, in hopes of soothing domestic social tensions and gaining remittances from loyal expatriates in the United States; (b) Central American parents weighed the risk of sending their youth unescorted to the border, versus the upside of getting money sent back home and\/or an anchor for possible citizenship, and thus were willing to take the subsequent risk with their own children\u2019s lives; (c) Mexico for a brief spell suspended its Draconian immigration laws to ensure Central Americans passed through rather than stopped in their country, and it sort of got a strange sense of payback at our ensuing border chaos; (d) a while ago the Obama administration signaled that most immigration laws concerning children, DREAMers or not, would not be enforced, and that insinuation green-lighted the current influx. The cynical administration hoped to soothe Latino feelings, and to create pressures for \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform\u201d before the 2016 election, as part of a long-term strategy of altering the demography of the American southwest to favor a liberal agenda. All four groups then called any who objected and wished to enforce existing federal law callous, nativist, racist, xenophobic, etc. The apparent logic is that no one will remember the self-interested actions that brought thousands to the border, only the ensuing humanitarian crisis that must steamroll through the agendas of the selfish groups on the backs of exploited children.<\/p>\n

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In a more existential fashion, the pawn strategy works in Gaza as well. Hamas\u2019s missiles are hidden among civilians, a two-pronged policy of hoping Israel does not find them all, while ensuring collateral damage that plays well in the Western media. Palestinians are mere pawns whose lives their leaders don\u2019t worry much about \u2014 again on the logic that why or how they are dying is lost in the media blitz and all that matters are the photos that confirm that they are in fact dying, a fact which indicts Israel.<\/p>\n

Common to both situations is the notion of disproportionality. Facts don\u2019t matter, given that the poorer, less capable party is always morally blameless, the more lawful and better off culpable, on the theory that the latter alone should be able to afford to make allowances and grant concessions, regardless of the facts on the ground.<\/p>\n

Just as we have forgotten the abject amorality of Central American parents, the Central American and Mexican governments, and the cynicism of an administration not enforcing federal laws, so too we have long ago forgot that Hamas started the entire disaster by murdering three teenagers and sending rockets into Israel. Instead, all that matters in the Western media now are photos of kids\u00a0in extremis\u00a0<\/em>on the border and Palestinians fleeing their homes. Using suffering pawns to further political agendas is tailor-made for the postmodern Western mind.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online – The Corner The humanitarian crisis on the border derived from four callous parties who used illegal immigrants as pawns for their own self-interested agendas: (a) Central American governments wanted to export \u201cexcess\u201d population, in hopes of soothing domestic social tensions and gaining remittances from loyal expatriates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[220,977,111],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-206","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7540,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/airlifts-to-d-c\/","url_meta":{"origin":7694,"position":0},"title":"Airlifts to D.C.?","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 9, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online (The Corner) Concerning the latest and deliberate\u00a0lack of border enforcement, all one can say is that it is very unlikely that impoverished Mexican nationals, many of them school-age children sent across the border ahead of their parents in search of American residency,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11479,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/caravan-contradictions\/","url_meta":{"origin":7694,"position":1},"title":"Caravan Contradictions","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 29, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness A\u201ccaravan\u201d\u2014the euphemism for a current foot-army of more than 10,000 Central Americans\u2014of would-be border crossers has now passed into Mexico. 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Yet right now in California\u2019s Central Valley, farm prices are booming, and, despite regional unemployment rates of over 15 percent, employers are paying record wages\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7648,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-moral-crisis-on-our-southern-border\/","url_meta":{"origin":7694,"position":3},"title":"The Moral Crisis on Our Southern Border","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A perfect storm of special interests have hijacked U.S. immigration law. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online No one knows just how many tens of thousands of Central American nationals \u2014 most of them desperate, unescorted children and teens \u2014 are streaming across America\u2019s southern border. Yet this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mexico"","block_context":{"text":"Mexico","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/mexico\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1606,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-new-nowhere-debate\/","url_meta":{"origin":7694,"position":4},"title":"A New Nowhere Debate?","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Bad Time Now would be a particularly bad time for the president to push for amnesty under the rubric of comprehensive immigration reform \u2014 an approach that failed Bush, despite economic good times and supposedly a supportive base. With unemployment near 10 percent, with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2010"","block_context":{"text":"May 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/may-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8224,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/class-race-and-illegal-immigration\/","url_meta":{"origin":7694,"position":5},"title":"Class, Race, And Illegal Immigration","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 20, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Peregrine The driving forces behind three decades of de facto non-enforcement of federal immigration law were largely the interests of elites across the political spectrum. Employers in agriculture, construction, the hospitality industry, landscaping, and food processing wanted access to cheap, industrious foreign national laborers. 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