General Dempsey: Organize for 20 years of refugees from mideast

The image of a 3-year-old Syrian boy who had drowned off the coast of Turkey has galvanized world attention on the migrants desperately fleeing the war in Syria for Europe.

Dempsey said the photos may have a similar effect to the 1995 deadly mortar attack on a Sarajevo market square that tipped the balance in favor of NATO’s intervention in Bosnia.

“I remember the world stopped and looked at Sarajevo,” Dempsey said. “Today, while we sit here, there’s 60 million refugees in the world, 42,000 families a day according to the U.N., and it just feels like there’s not the level of interest in it that that one incident in Sarajevo generated, you know, just, 20 years ago.”

Dempsey said the implications of a breakdown of family units among those 60 million refugees is an issue that future leaders will deal with for decades.

“My own judgment on this is we need to look both unilaterally and with partners at these issues as a generational problem, and organize ourselves and resource ourselves at a sustainable level to deal with it for 20 years,” said Dempsey. 

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Gen. Martin Dempsey Calls Migrant Flow Into Europe a 'Real Crisis' 

I agree with this assessment by the way. What is happening in the middle east right now is so destructive to all countries there that 20 years might be a conservative estimate of complete chaos happening there. So, to some degree this chaos (1% to 10%) over time will spread to Europe during these 20 years as well given present variables in place.

The problems of the middle east are so catastrophic at present that they won't be solved until ISIS is no more and the problems between Shiites and Sunnis stop being so violent. However, that might be 100 years or more from now because of the way those cultures deal with stuff like this historically.

So, in the long run anyone who can run away from the middle east as a family likely will be better off in the long run rather than staying there. Because the way this looks millions more are going to die there during the next 20 years or more. And I'm not sure anything the world can do at this point can completely stop that.

So, we may see numbers (within 10 years) like 100s of thousands a month or more eventually desperately trying to get to Europe (or anywhere) they can survive another day, another year or at all ever.