A Responsibility to Help Iraqi Refugees

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A Responsibility to Help Iraqi Refugees
Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2007-06-12 00:44. Media

By Ivan Eland, Independent Institute

The Iraq War has made refugees of millions of Iraqis. They have been ethnically cleansed or displaced to other locations both inside the country, to neighboring countries, and overseas. Yet the Bush administration, the creator of the chaos and mayhem in Iraq, has done little to help them.

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Similarly, no one any longer believes rosy Bush administration pronouncements on Iraq. Although even Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, still has trouble mouthing the “L” word, people with any common sense, including stalwart Republican supporters of the administration, has had that sinking feeling in their stomachs for a while now that the cause in Iraq has been lost.

Politicians don’t like to tell the American public what they don’t want to hear, but at least the administration could quietly begin to open the floodgates for Iraqi refugees. Many of these people helped the United States in Iraq and could be in grave danger once U.S. forces are reduced or withdrawn.

Alas, however, the United States, the melting pot of immigrants, has a surprisingly poor record of opening its borders to wartime refugees. A couple of examples are illustrative. The United States left far too many of its friends to a grim fate after the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. In addition, prior to and during World War II, the United States had a disgraceful record of taking in Jews being openly and viciously persecuted by Adolf Hitler. The United States could have saved many innocent lives if the puny number of Jewish refugees taken in had been significantly hiked. This abysmal record was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s greatest failings.

The United States must do better in the Iraq case. Much of the violence in Iraq has been caused directly or indirectly by U.S. policy. The Iraq invasion was a war of choice against a former ally that had never instigated hostilities against the United States and was little threat to U.S. security. The United States chose to depose an authoritarian regime that was the only thing holding together a fractious country, which already had had its social fabric torn by numerous wars and grinding international economic sanctions. The United States, with insufficient military strength to provide security for the country, then disbanded the only other forces capable of helping bring order—the Iraqi security forces.

With so much to answer for in Iraq, the Bush administration needs to own up to its colossal failure and help save Iraqis that have already sacrificed much to help the United States in its quixotic quest to bring democracy to that divided nation. Unfortunately for these Iraqis, in similar past situations, the United States has a very poor record, and the Bush administration is not good at even implicitly making mistakes.