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When ISIL struck France, it wasn’t declaring a new war: it was extending a war long suffered by Syrian people. Syrians have already suffered enough — and have suffered a great deal more — under their own secular government. But now the French, and the Syrians who run to France, have found a common tormenter in religious fanaticism. Only Syrians, however, are simultaneously victimized by theocratic fascism and said to embody it.

The Paris massacres ought to steel our resolve to shelter any victim of slaughter this grim, wherever they’re from.

Forget basic human decency for a moment.

Europe may not want refugees, but 812,230 — many of whom are Syrian — have arrived by sea this year alone.

As bewildered European border patrols and coast guards can attest, keeping a desperate mass of people from safer ground is as futile as it is immoral. Shoot up a concert hall? People will run. Shoot up a bar? People will run. Bomb a street? People will try to figure out what on earth just happened. Then they’ll run. But set a country on fire? Just try and catch them. Short of applying the sort of violent force that has people running in the first place, there’s no stopping any sentient being from going for cover.

There’s only managing the flow. Officials can help people exit dangerous situations in as orderly a fashion as possible under even the most chaotic of circumstances. Only then will life become safer for both the runners and for the places they’re running to. This principle applies to clearing out a tense stadium — it applies more to clearing out large parts of a country.