This is a story I have not paid much attention to, but probably should have (and I only looked it up when my mnother called me, hysterical that she found herself in agreement with Ted Kennedy):
Moving to address the flood of refugees fleeing war-torn Iraq, the Bush administration and the United Nations have developed a plan that would bring several thousand of them to the United States over the next 10 months, officials familiar with discussions of the plan say.
Under the plan, which is expected to be formally unveiled this week, the United Nations began its first large-scale screening this month of Iraqis who have fled to Syria and Jordan since the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It hopes to register 135,000 to 200,000 of them to determine which Iraqis have fled persecution at home and would be eligible for refugee status.
It appears we have only accepted several hundred refugeees, and that seems like an awfully miniscule number considering the sheer volume of people who have fled Iraq. Especially folks like this:
2003 was a year A.J. will never forget. He was honored to work as an interpreter for American troops.
“I was very proud to wear the uniform and to put the American flag on my shoulder,” he says.
But it all ended for him less than two years later, when he was wounded on patrol with his American buddies.
“On that day we got attacked by mortars and RPGs,” recalls A.J.
And while his wounds have healed, he’s in more danger than ever. Militant Shiites and Sunnis brand him as a collaborator.
“Now I can’t go back to my house,” he says. “I’m living in a totally different area and I’m facing a very hard time.”
A.J.’s hope? America. And while he has glowing support from American commanders, he’s been turned down twice for a visa, with no explanation.
And he’s not alone. Millions are signing up for passports to escape the chaos. More than 2 million Iraqis have fled their homes — that’s about 10 percent of the population now living outside Iraq’s border. And the U.S. has accepted only a handful of them.
Of the 50,000 refugees allowed into the U.S. last year, only 202 were Iraqis.
We should make it a priority to make sure that those Iraqis who help our troops aren’t given a death sentence, and we should be welcoming and inviting thousands more refugees every year. By any standard of decency, that is our obligation. And of those we admit, folks like AJ should be given the first plane here.
I am glad the adminstration is upping the number who will be admitted, but I would suggest that number needs to be even higher.
Ugh
But, but, but, everything is going so well over there, who in their right mind would want to leave? I mean, there’s more freshly painted schools per capita in Iraq than anywhere else in the world! Not to mention a good supply of extra body parts.
RSA
Ugh beat me to it. Accepting large numbers of Iraqi refugees would be an implicit acknowledgment that things in Iraq aren’t going so well. Do we need to accept large numbers of immigrants from other “democracies”?
rachel
I wonder who’s going to be the first to suggest that we shouldn’t allow such potentially dangerous people into our country? 5… 4… 3…
Teak111
And the problem is just getting started. Once we we decide to back the Shites, and we will because its the only way to make progress, there will be a massive refuge problem. I’m can only hope we hadle it better then we’ve handles everything else over there. Some how I doubt it.
rachel
(Im not suggesting that, BTW, our obligation to shelter them is clear.)
Zifnab
All I can think is that Virgil Goode is going to flip out.
I thought we were fighting them over there so we didn’t have to shelter them over here?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I think we should accept pretty much all of them. After all, we did kind of break their country for them. (“But, but, Saddam! Saddam! Saddam!” Spare me. We propped that sack of shit up, too. Then we bombed the crap out of Iraq, then starved the nation for 13 years, then we took over whatever was left.)
Steve
I saw in the paper this morning (maybe it was in one of your links too, I don’t know) that the speaker of the Iraqi parliament said he’d rather see refugees from Iraq resettle in Arab countries, rather than the U.S., because otherwise he fears a permanent “brain drain” for Iraq.
He has a pretty good point. When the smoke clears, Iraq is going to need a solid professional class in order to return to some semblance of a civil society – the lawyers, the educators, and so forth. A lot of these people have already fled Iraq – since they’re the ones with the financial means to do so – but if they end up in the U.S. they’re probably never going back. That’s good for us, in the same way that getting Einstein on our side was good for us, but it’s not good for Iraq in the long run.
The other countries in the region have already been taking in a lot of refugees from Iraq, whether they like it or not, and I wouldn’t be opposed to simply formalizing that arrangement. Maybe we could offer some financial assistance to help other regional governments with their resettlement programs, acknowledging that we’re the reason that these people are refugees in the first instance.
Darrell
I agree entirely, just as long as they vet them well to screen out jihadi extremists
rachel
Oh! Maybe they can waterboard them all! That ought to get the jihadi extremists to confess.
cleek
i think Malkin should go over there and verify that there really is an “AJ” and that he was really wounded.
Jake
See? The Iraqis just need to clap harder!
Andrew
I’ve got just the place to resettle them!
Richard Bottoms
It’s almost painful watching John’s belief in the basic decency of the GOP get shattered.
Like the poor soul you’ll see in a horror movie mumbling “this can’t be happening” over and over again even as they are being chopped to bits.
Mr Furious
How could this happen? Maybe AJ needs to be introduced to Chalabi, then not only will he and everyone he knows be given visas, they’ll get box seats at the next SOTU.
I fear that what Ugh and RSA said up top is the truth. There is probably a deliberate attempt to keep people from leaving. It would be tacit admission that things actually suck, plus they don’t want all the U.S. friendlies leaving…
For someone to have risked his life (and his entire family’s) to work as a translator, get wounded and then be thrown to the wolves might be the most abhorrent thing we’ve done in a long list of abhorrent bullshit.
I hate this fucking Administration with a white hot hate. there’s just no way not to.
Zifnab
No. Refugees want to flee their country. That’s why they’re refugees. If they wanted to go home, they wouldn’t have left. I think Sauerbrey needs a basic lesson in human motivation. Or perhaps she just needs to spend a few weeks in Iraq outside the Green Zone, where she can empathize with all the would-be refugees who just want to live safely in their homes.
grumpy realist
“Basic decency”? Ha. Look at how Bush et al have been treating everyone around them. There’s never any quid-pro-quo. Once you’ve been used up or become an embarassment, it’s over the side into the drink for you.
Look at what we’ve been doing with our soldiers. Sure, you signed up for the National Guard way back when–tough. We can suddenly demand you be a soldier full-time, rotation after rotation into Iraq, reneg on every single promise we made you, and you supposedly don’t have a leg to stand on because “you volunteered.”
After all this is over, does anyone think that any potential recruit will sign up for the military ever again?
Steve
Yes, it’s hard to imagine how this person could have such a limited understanding of refugees, isn’t it?
Jake
If Sourberries had shut up there it would have just been a “Thank you Dr. Obvious, how did this twat get this job?” sort of comment. Yes, you get refugees when the choices are stay and die or flee and live (maybe). They wish the flood or army or what have you hadn’t swept through so they could be at home but given the conditions they can’t. However, the second part of her comment is just plain fucked up. Yes you’re a refugee and yes some unreasonable people might say this adminstration is to blame but you can’t come here. Oh no, Mommy America decided that would be bad for you. It is better that you just sit (or squat) tight wherever you are until we decide things are “secure” in Iraq.
I move she be forced to live in tent city until that time.
Wilfred
The number had been 466; two days ago it was upped to 7,000, this out of a total that easily exceeds 1 million. Don’t hold your breath on the 7,000 either.
Anti-Muslim bigotry is the last acceptable form of racism/bigotry. Along with a few other people, I scan the right-wing blogs each day, finding examples like: “The only good Muslim is a convert or an apostate” or, “We. Will. Kill. Muslims.” Substitute Jew or Black and ask yourself what would happen to the site (these are from RedState, BTW).
The right wing would have a collective stroke if even 10% of these refugees were allowed into the United States.
Jake
All the more reason to let them in. If we can allow gay & lesbian refugees first, so much the better.
Frank
I have no sympathy for you here John. You do have a moral obligation to the Iraqis, but I don’t. If we let in any signifigant number of refugees there will certainly be those amoung them who want to kill us. That would be fine by me if they would only kill Repugnants, but we both know that isn’t possible. Whats more if any Democrat in the country cooperates in helping Iraqi refugees settle here, your erstwhile allies in the Repugnant party will blame us for the deaths the terrorists cause.
You want to help the people whose lives you ruined, donate money or move to the middle east and help build shelters, don’t ask me to step out on a limb so you can saw it off behind me.
Jake
Trythese.
Frank
Jake- Thanks but I don’t need them yet. I just get tired of these people winning elections most of the time. Maybe we could avoid handing them the issue some of the time?
mrmobi
Virgil Goode is a great American.
He understands that all followers of Islam are required to kill Americans. I sure wish someone would let him know about these 7,000 new terrorists being allowed into our country. I can’t wait to listen to his advice about this new Islamofascist menace.
Where’s my buddy Darrell? I’m sure he has a plan for these new immigrants. Some kind of camp, with special uniforms. First, we interrogate them (harshly), then, two in the brainpan, a la Lambchop.
God Bless the Party of Torture.
RSA
Leave it to a liberal to propose something special for potential terrorists. Naked and branded is the way to go.
mrmobi
RSA, naked and branded is good, but even the Nazis had uniforms for their, uh, guests. I suppose it’s ok as long as there are no visitors allowed.
The Iraqi democracy is going through a difficult period, but that’s no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater and let in a bunch of terrorists. Let them go to one of the other democracies in the Middle East, ummmmm. Oh. Nevermind.
mrmobi
Frank, like most lefties, you’re not getting the point. All Party of Torture politics is a setup for a Karl Rove reach-around of the Democrat Party. You must provide your own lube, though.
Didn’t we already build a bunch of schools and police stations and other infrastructure in Iraq?
Oh. Nevermind.
Joathan
I guess you’re not an atheist.
Check out this piece in the Washington Post.
Krista
Poor woman. It’s bad enough already that her son associates with riff-raff like us, and now this…
Sirkowski
In exchange, all the people who were for the war could immigrate to Iraq.
Krista
His attitude towards agnostics wasn’t much better…
Evidently, he also thinks that agnostics are too warm and fuzzy to get pissed off when they’re being blatantly condescended to.
The Mechanical Eye
This is sorta why, despite my deep disappointment, and even shock, with the Bush administration, I’ll just be staying in the squishy center and not go completely into the anti-war crowd.
It might be gratifying to write that in a blog comments section someplace, but beyond the interwebs, it’s embrassing, rageoholic nonsense. Come on: you going to talk about the Reich Wing and the Rethuglicans? This goes on the silly pile, next to the Demoncrats and the Gay Agenda.
As for the refugees, we really do have an obligation to accept at least those who a) wish to come to the United States, as opposed to familiar neigboring Arab staes, and b) aren’t criminals/fanatics/terrorists.
Those who stuck out their necks for us ought not suffer from our country’s failures.
Jake
Yeah, you do.
Digital Amish
I’m suspicious. I’ve been told (repeatedly) that if our troops leave Iraq the terrarists will follow them here. What’s to stop these so called refugees from sending back directions once we show them where we live?
Frank
TME- Repugnants would be “embrassing, rageoholic nonsense.” Except for the fact that President Bush calls it the Democrat party, Gwen Ifill calls it the Democrat party, Republican congressmen and Senators call it the Democrat party, and fnucking David Broderella Queen of Moderation call it the Democrat party.
You and Jake take your concern troll bullshit and shove it up your ass.
Jake
And Frank will stuff newspapers down his pants to soak up the symptoms of his Terra/Republican induced incontinence.
les
In the context of refugees, we’ve created a nice Catch-22 for them too. Not surprisingly, many thousands of refugees have fled Baghdad; and pretty much nobody wants to go there, where ever they came from. To be a legal refugee–and certainly to get to the U.S.–they have to have a passport. Our fine provisional authority, in one of it’s first acts, invalidated prior Iraqi passports. Guess the only place in Iraq that it’s possible to get a new one. Go ahead, guess.
Perry Como
A freshly painted school?
The Other Steve
Ministry of Freedom and Fun?
The Other Steve
You generally don’t start accepting Refugees, unless you lost the war.
Jake
A freshly paved over car bomb crater?
Zifnab
Wherever they’re passing out all those ponies?
Perry Como
I thought the ponies were crushed under 363 tons of cash.
tBone
They’re still there, moonbat. No one ever said the ponies would be alive.
jg
The People’s Republic of Kurdistan?
Kimmitt
Why does it fall to us to advocate for this? Any vaguely decent human being who supported the war should be shouting at the top of his or her lungs, “If you SOBs manage to pull us out, make damn sure to take care of the people who put their lives on the line for us!”
Gah.
Richard Bottoms
Noe ttah’s funny.
In a tragic, thousands more are going to die kind if way.
Nancy Irving
We have also stiffed Iraqi Christians who have begged for asylum in the U.S. Our invasion has unleashed terrible violence against them by the Muslim majority; plus, we have even aggravated their plight by allowing American fundamentalists to go over there to evangelize, which has created more backlash against them.
Can we sink any lower? I hope not.
Perry Como
In all fairness, that is G*d just testing their faith.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I think He’s testing everyone’s faith at this point.
jake
Tsk. Haven’t you heard that Mr. President is His favourite person in the whole wide world? Whatever Mr. President wants is A-OK by God. Plus, a lot of the radical groups in Iraq have revived the sport of gay bashing and they use guns and powertools, unlike the sissies in the US. So God (according to Robertson etc) is happy as a celestial clam.
bago
To re-iterate. If you screw your local friendlies, the people that can actually make anything work… and leave them to die, you really are an evil motherfucker who hates the troops AND the friendly locals.
It’s like you want to lose, with prejudice.
SLE
Those folks are screwed. I just returned from Iraq, and believe me, you don’t need to be an interpreter to have problems. The guy who ran the local video store on my FOB was beheaded.
This is not a small number of people, even though it is getting smaller every day. Interpreters don’t want to go on patrol – they will be recognized. Drivers don’t want to bring stuff on to American bases. Video store owners… well, they had better make a lot of money in a hurry.