Most of the refugees in Germany are from Syria. The United States has admitted about 1,900 refugees from Syria over the past four years. Yes, you read that right. President Obama has now pledged to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees — a decision that had met defiance from more than two dozen Republican governors eager to conflate the words “Muslim” or “Middle Eastern” with terrorist.

Whatever happened to “the home of the brave”?

Set aside the fact that the Syrian crisis cannot be disentangled from the spillover of the Iraq war, and so America’s direct responsibility is engaged. Set aside the fact that Obama said in 2011 that President Bashar al-Assad must step aside, and so America’s responsibility is engaged. Set aside the presidential “red line” not upheld in 2013. Even then, by any reasonable measure, the American response to the Syrian refugee crisis has been pitiful.

For a land of immigrants peopled over centuries by families fleeing war, famine or hardship, it has been especially pitiful.

Germany has stepped in. Wir schaffen das — we can do this. The can-do spirit has made a trans-Atlantic crossing.

Merkel’s place in the history books was already assured. She was the woman who over a decade steered a united Germany to a self-assurance striking for a country that, even at the turn of the century, was still uncertain if it could allow itself a modicum of pride. But with her decision this year to admit Syrian and other refugees, she has become a towering European figure, certainly the equal of such postwar German giants as Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl — perhaps even surpassing them because her Germany is its own master whereas theirs was still under degrees of American tutelage.