The poster who originally wrote those words, wrote them in context of a much larger post. (That phrase was 0.8% of the entire posts by word count). That post was written in response to a propaganda article [0] that got 130+ upvotes. You can't expect a response to propaganda to not include at least a little rhetoric.

And as far as the quality of discussion, the point it really went downhill was when this responder seized on that one small sentence (0.8% of the post!) and responded with pure empty rhetoric: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10225065

> If you want serious debate I'd suggest you can start by not defending the comment that's clearly overstepped the boundary on what constitutes serious debate.

No. If you want serious debate, don't defend a comment that skimmed a thoughtful contribution to cherry-pick the most potentially objectionable bit of rhetoric and then posture off an out-of-context quote of it. And, don't repeat that same mistake.

[0] http://www.carryology.com/bags/whats-in-my-bag-what-refugees...

TeamCarryology: @Brad, I think you've missed the point entirely. Through this piece, and by using 'carry'as a thread, we're able to bring this 'serious' and dire crisis to the attention of our 130K + readers, in the hope that they may take interest in these people and visit the International Rescue Committee to learn more.