America loves to act as the world’s “big brother,” taking on international bullies and saving innocent civilians from their devastating punches.

Though we love to play the hero on the main stage, we often fail to compensate for the damages we have caused once the curtains have closed.

Since violence broke out in Syria in 2011, more than 250,000 innocent civilians have died and at least 11 million people of the country’s 22 million have been displaced. According to the United Nations, Syrians are now the world's largest refugee population.

Yet in the last four years, the United States has accepted just 1,500 Syrians refugees. In September, President Obama announced that 10,000 Syrians would be allowed entry into the country in the next year, which despite being five times what the US has accepted in four years combined, its negligible compared to the acceptance of other countries. Germany, for example, has pledged to admit 800,000 asylum seekers, including Syrian refugees.

However, in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris that left 130 civilians dead, as well as 14 in San Bernandino, Obama’s plan has been heavily criticized. The attacks have unleashed a reign of fear among the American people, who insist that these Syrian refugees could be Muslim extremists and will pose a massive threat to national security.

Though the US state department has attempted to dispel this fear in regards to refugees, insisting Syrians flown into the country will be the most heavily vetted group of people currently allowed into the US, 31 states have openly opposed accepting Syrian refugees.

Though the final say will fall into the hands of the federal government, lack of cooperation from individual states can make the acceptance process much more difficult.

Arguments for not accepting refugees vary but the overwhelming majority is rooted in fear and flat out racism.

Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, in addition to expressing their disagreement with Obama’s plan, have suggested that only Christian refugees be allowed acceptance into the US, despite the country’s history of dedication to separation of church and state.

“There are a lot of Christians in Syria that have no place now. They’ll be either executed or imprisoned, either by Assad or by ISIS,” said Jeb Bush, “We should focus our efforts as it relates to the refugees for the Christians that are being slaughtered.”

In an interview for CNN, Ted Cruz, whose father was a political refugee from Cuba, was asked how his father-a Christian-would have felt if the US government turned him away. He said, “If my father were part of a theocratic and political movement like radical Islam that promotes murdering anyone who doesn’t share your extreme faith or forcibly converting them, then it would make perfect sense.”

Ironically, in 1981, a Gallop poll revealed that 71% of Americans were against accepting Cuban refugees where as today, in Bloomberg Politics poll conducted in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, it was found that 53 percent of Americans don’t want to accept any Syrian refugees.

Not to mention, currently, homegrown terrorism is a bigger threat to Americans than ISIS is.

According to a count by New America, a Washington research center, white supremacists, anti-government fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists have killed twice as many people compared to radical Muslims since September 11, 2001.

Furthermore, researchers Charles Kurzman of the University of North Carolina and David Schanzer of Duke University published a survey, which asked 382 police and sheriff's departments nationwide to rank sources of threat from violent extremism in their jurisdiction. Almost 74 percent listed anti-government violence, while 39 percent listed Muslim extremists.

With this in mind, this anti-refugee stance becomes even more appalling in light of the US’s military presence against ISIS ,where these refugees used to call home. In fact, an international coalition led by the U.S. has launched more than 9,000 airstrikes against ISIS, naturally killing hundreds of civilians in the process.

Yet many of the same people who want to refuse Syrian refugees also believe Obama’s administration hasn’t done enough militarily in the region. Some even suggest indiscriminate bombing as a solution for this ideological war.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump, who along with Ben Carson has shown to be favored by Republicans in matters of foreign policy, raised a roaring applause in Iowa when he said, “I would just bomb those suckers... I'd blow up the pipes, I'd blow up the refineries, every single inch, there would be nothing left."

In this same country, him and many other candidates suggest “no fly zones” for these refugees as an alternative to accepting them in America. “A big beautiful safe zone, and you have whatever it is so people can live and they’ll be happier,” Trump said. “They’ll be there and the weather’s the same, and all of the different things, and then … then it’s all over, they move back, and they go back into their cities, and they rebuild their cities and they start out and they start over again.”

On Twitter, Trump suggested that these refugees that would occupy these “big beautiful safe zones” could be ISIS.

Shelly Pitterman, the head of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees in Washington D.C., countered this statement when he said, “The Syrian and Iraqi refugees are the victims of terrorism, fleeing the same type of atrocities that we’ve recently witnessed…They’ve rejected the ideology of extremism and share the values of freedom and tolerance.”

Not to mention, by denying these people a safe haven from war, we are only perpetuating this cycle of terrorism sprouting from this region, bred in large from western bullets.

An article in The Guardian by Lauren Gambino, Patrick Kingsley, and Alberto Nardelli argues “By rejecting Syrian refugees, American governors are in fact helping ISIS, because they are proving ISIS’s argument that the West does not want to assist Syrian Muslims, and that their only salvation lies in ISIS.”

Americans have lived in fear for a handful of days and these days will never be forgotten.

But these people live in fear everyday. If we want to be an international military power, then we must not leave our morals behind in the process.