An Iraqi escape hatch could embarrass Bush
By ANDREW GREELEY
First published: Friday, August 3, 2007
I see by the papers, as Mr. Dooley used to say, that the American
ambassador in Iraq is trying to obtain passports for Iraqi members of
the embassy staff and isn't having much success. The United States
hires Iraqis to work for it, but does not want those employees to
have an escape hatch when the end comes. Homeland Security is combing
the list in search of possible terrorists. It might be easier if
Homeland Security gave them the passports and, when they arrived,
forced them to live in the toxic house trailers it has stockpiled in
New Orleans for Katrina victims.
What will happen to those Iraqis who worked for the United States
when we finally pull up stakes? In Vietnam, the American allies were
sent to "re-education" camps. A few were released eventually. In
Iraq, someone will cut off their heads. Americans will feel no more
responsibility for their deaths than they do for the tens of
thousands of Iraqis who have already died during our feckless
occupation. One of the arguments that the neocons make for staying on
in Iraq, even for 10 more years, is that we have an obligation to the
Iraqi people. But no obligation to those specific people who faced
death because they worked for the American government.
There are two reasons why the ambassador's plea for escape hatches
for his employees might embarrass the Bush administration. The first
is that it violates the party line that we are not going to leave
Iraq until the job is done, until, as the President promises, we've
won. The ambassador is "pessimistic."
Outside of the coterie of advisers around the President, their allies
in the media and die-hard "patriots," there is little doubt that the
war has been lost.
The "surge" strategy cannot work. Even half a million Americans
couldn't put out the fires of ethnic hatred that consume the country.
The suicide bomber who drove a truck bomb into a crowd celebrating a
soccer victory was proof of that, if any more proof is needed. The
surge, which was supposed to last three months, has been extended to
September, then to 2008, now to 2009. It becomes evident that the
surge was a response to the pessimistic report of the Iraq Study
Group designed to protect the President from defeat until he's safe
out of office.
The war will not end until the inauguration of the next president.
Mr. Bush can leave with the boast that he kept the faith. Out of
office, he can blame the Democrats for losing the war -- and Congress
and the media and pessimists. The atmosphere in the White House is
remarkably like that of the months before the war. The slick spin,
the dishonesty (conflating the bin Laden al-Qaida with the small
group of "foreign" terrorists in Iraq which has dubbed itself
al-Qaida), the threats of more terrorism, the attacks on the
patriotism of critics of the President -- a recycle of all the stale,
tired, Karl Rove tactics.
Six hundred Americans have died trying to police Iraq's civil war
since the surge was announced. Many more will die before January 2009
because of an evil effort to preserve the President's infallibility.
Does one have to say that each of these unnecessary deaths breaks the
hearts of many Americans, as Chicago novelist Harry Mark Petrakis
poignantly shows in his novella "Legends of Glory"?
At this late stage of defeat, do not such deaths come dangerously
close to war crimes?
The second reason for denying an escape hatch to embassy staff is
that immigrant-hating nativists will think that dirty, dark-skinned
Iraqi refugees in huge numbers are preparing to inundate this
country. The Minute Men and their allies will go crazy. We don't want
no Iraqis.
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=611316&category
=OPINION&newsdate=8/3/2007
--
get real. like jesus would ever own a gun or vote republican.
.
|
