[A]ny serious proposal to do something about refugees would involve a massive increase in the intake by members of the coalition countries, and (as I’ve found from previous discussions of the topic) the chickenhawks who pushed this war are utterly terrified by the risks this would involve, given that many of these refugees have little reason to love us. Even suggestions that we are obligated to rescue those who risked their own lives working for the coalition are much too scary for these fighting keyboardists.As Colin Powell once warned George W. Bush:
You broke it, you own it.We turned these ordinary, decent people into refugees and we have an obligation to help them. Our soldiers are not the solution.
Either the US-led forces in Iraq should withdraw immediately, handing over power to a UN-led force, or they should withdraw immediately, handing over power to nobody and leaving it to ordinary Iraqis to sort out their own destinies. Either way, we, the people of the invading countries, have an obligation to do everything we can to repair the damage our democratically-elected (???) governments have wrought. And the most obvious, most humane step is allowing refugees from Iraq into our own countries.
But of course the chickenhawks who said we had to attack Saddam to free the Iraqi people from violent subjugation will be the first ones to say that we cannot allow these same people across our borders. Why not?
Because they are so pissed off with us that we cannot trust them? But wait a minute - I thought that (according to those same people) the US-led occupation was "achieving its goals", the "vast majority of Iraqis" were peaceful and happy, and that gigantic pink and blue lollipops were about to start falling from heaven onto the streets of Baghdad any day now. So that might explain why they have to stay in Baghdad - to experience the rapture for themselves!
