The refugee crisis is a horrific indictment of the West not because we are not giving them our homes, but because we have failed to protect theirs.
The drowning of a Syrian family washed up on a Turkish tourist beach has rightly caused outrage.
A knee-jerk reaction that we must do more to accommodate people fleeing horrific plight and oppression is understandable.
But it will not end the crisis. Until we tackle the cause of this mass migration, surely one of the greatest in history, there will be many more bodies on the beach.
That cause is the unchecked rise of fascism in the Middle East and beyond.
As we all balk in horror at the image of boy from Kobane, hundreds of his school friends are being subjected to equal brutality and murder.
They are being brought up in a world of unprecedented historical evil.
They are being taught to kill, to maim and to hate or be killed themselves.
And we have done nothing.
The West has miserably failed to protect them from the forces currently ripping their homes apart the murderers of ISIS and the thugs of Assad.
The solution to this crisis can only be the defeat of these ugly twins of the modern world.
The West has the means to do it.
History shows us in Kosovo not to mention in Sierra Leone and East Timor how we can use our military might to protect the helpless in the world.
We must now step up our bombing campaign against the evils of ISIS, expand it to attack Assad’s forces as well and finally provide proper assistance to the Kurds and moderates to build a peaceful, democratic and stable Syria.
And we need troops on the ground not just as an offensive force, but as a protective one too.
This is not blood-thirsty sabre-rattling.
We have a duty as the powerful to help those refugees trying to make the dangerous journey to Europe. But we also have a duty to protect those who cannot escape.
Real peace, after all, is not the absence of conflict it is the presence of justice.
The West now, it seems, has a growing will to find these refugees a home but what we really need is to protect these people’s homes in the first place.