Administration officials also acknowledge that there are limitations on determining the history of Syrian refugees since we’re in no position to collect vital information from Syria. Even if the president believes the case for accepting refugees overrides those concerns (as I basically do), he should acknowledge their legitimacy.

What made Mr. Obama’s assault on Republicans particularly outrageous is his hypocrisy, by which I mean the president’s failure to act in any meaningful way to avert the humanitarian disaster now engulfing Syria. It’s not as if options weren’t available to him.

In 2012 Mr. Obama rebuffed plans to arm Syrian rebels despite the fact that his former secretaries of defense and state, his C.I.A. director and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff supported them. He repeatedly insisted he would not put American soldiers in Syria or pursue a prolonged air campaign. He refused to declare safe havens or no-fly zones. And it was also in 2012 that Mr. Obama warned the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, that using chemical weapons would cross a “red line.” Yet when Mr. Assad did just that, Mr. Obama did nothing.

The president, perhaps fearful of offending the pro-Assad Iranian government with which he was trying to negotiate a nuclear arms deal, chose to sit by while a humanitarian catastrophe unfolded. As Walter Russell Mead wrote in The American Interest, “This crisis is in large part the direct consequence of President Obama’s decision to stand aside and watch Syria burn.” Some of us find it a bit nervy for the president to lecture the opposition party for heartlessness because cleaning up after his failure raises security concerns.

A reasonable approach would take account of both the humanitarian crisis in Syria and the concerns of critics of the president’s proposal. Doing so might result in a pause in the process to reassess our security procedures, make improvements where necessary and then proceed. Under the leadership of the new speaker, Paul Ryan, the House has passed just such a proposal with a broad bipartisan majority — 47 Democrats sided with Republicans — but Mr. Obama has promised to veto it if it passes the Senate. In his Manichaean conception of politics, such balance has no place, it seems.