Saint Bob’s blame game won’t help the migrants

SO, WHO’S to blame for the drowning of threeyear- old Aylan Kurdi, whose lifeless body was found on a Turkish beach? Not Bob Geldof, for sure. Pop singer and unofficial national conscience, he’s offered to take in four families immediately and give them shelter in his homes in Kent and London.

Of Aylan, ‘Saint’ Bob says: ‘I look at i t with profound shame and a monstrous betrayal of who we are and what we wish to be. We are in a moment that will be discussed and impacted on in 300 years’ time.’

According to those like-minded people wearing ‘I Love Refugees’ T- shirts, anyone who thinks otherwise is showing a lack of concern for starving, frightened, bullied people seeking a haven from violent conflict. They are guilty of Aylan’s death.

But there are more obvious culprits. For all our sympathy, surely these must include Aylan Kurdi’s father, Abdullah, and his wife, Rehan, who chose to risk their own — and their children’s — lives by embarking on an obviously perilous sea voyage when they already had safe haven in Turkey.

Then there are the people traffickers and Aylan’s Canada-based aunt, who paid the £2,600 for the journey from Turkey to Greece.

We might also consider certain Western governments for destabilising the Islamists in the Middle East by invading Afghanistan and Iraq.

All of the accused acted in the full knowledge that the results might be disastrous, but they calculated on a more optimistic outcome.

In the case of Aylan’s family, was that rational — or rash?

With the benefit of hindsight, their actions were reckless. The family had escaped the immediate dangers of life i n war- ravaged Syria by travelling to Turkey — only to expose themselves and their two children to a hazardous, night-time crossing of the choppy Mediterranean in a boat ill-suited for the purpose.

Only Aylan’s father survives. His wife and two sons are dead. He’ll have to live out his days coming to terms with the decision he made.

The same applies to the aunt who concedes they would be alive today if she hadn’t sent the money.

And if all nations had to offer asylum to those wishing to risk their lives attempting to travel to such countries illegally, there would be no immigration system, no borders, no identifiable nations left, only people moving constantly, a vast, roaming herd of human wildebeest.

ANd, of c ourse, t he interfering military, led by America, should have f oreseen t he conse - quences. Most of us suspected that we’d regret removing Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and liquidating Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

Naturally, those responsible can’t afford to admit as much, far less take responsibility for the great wave of refugees their geo-political tinkering has triggered.

Least of all to blame for the drowning of Aylan Kurdi, his brother and his mother, are ourselves.

Yet the tragedy polarises public opinion, dividing those who say our way of life can only be preserved by being cautious about accepting migrants, from others who think such an i nflux will be l i berating and life-enhancing.

Radio 4’s Any Answers on Saturday had a caller identifying himself as Noah (calling from his Ark, no doubt) who said the emotional atmosphere created by the photos of Aylan’s drowned body would generate greater numbers of Muslim migrants who would work together to change Britain into somewhere that suited them better.

The phone-in’s presenter Anita Anand was shocked. did he mean the picture of this dead child was staged?

‘ Noah’ s ai d he t hought t he ‘emotional’ coverage of the story, in newspapers and on TV, was part of a conspiracy to increase immigration and to quell opposition to it.

‘Noah’ expresses, in part at least, the beliefs of some, usually older, people. T-shirts proclaiming ‘I Love Refugees’ or ‘Welcome To Refugees’ trumpet the sentiments of others.

One group says we should be careful about giving homes to people who might produce t he next generation of jihadists who consider us their mortal enemy. Another says we should hang our heads in shame about f ailing to help desperate people.

What we need are leaders who can devise a cogent, intelligent strategy. david Cameron, while seeking some middle way, began by suggesting that the Government would only help genuine refugees recognised as such, in situ, in Syria.

However, the pictures of a drowned boy changed that. Now there’s talk of bombing Syria, taking military action against people traffickers and expanding the ‘ vulnerable persons relocation programme’ under which we’d previously taken only 216 Syrians from refugee camps.

doesn’t quite sound like a proper strategy yet, does it?

They say ‘hard cases make bad law’. Likewise, heart-wrenching stories such as Aylan’s are an unreliable basis for migration policy.