Opinion: How are Iraqi refugees any different?

[babylonsister]

http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=50317

Opinion: How are Iraqi refugees any different?
By Dorian de Wind, Special to Stars and Stripes


The worsening Iraqi refugee crisis has evoked some poignant memories of a muggy May morning 32 years ago at a makeshift refugee camp at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. Military personnel like me and others were there to welcome South Vietnamese refugees to the States. An article I wrote at the time describing my experience said: “The character of a nation is reflected in the faces of these volunteers.”

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Since the war in Iraq started more than four years ago, the U.S. has admitted fewer than 3,000 Iraqi refugees. Earlier this year, under pressure from the United Nations and others, the State Department promised to allow 7,000 Iraqi refugees to enter the U.S. this year. To date, the U.S. has fallen far short of that goal. As in Vietnam, these are men and women who risked their lives by working with U.S. military and government officials, who believed our promises, and who now find themselves the targets of terrorists, insurgents and militia groups.

What if Iraq collapses and millions more Iraqis flee? Will we welcome hundreds of thousands of them as we welcomed the South Vietnamese? Doesn’t the U.S. as an invading and occupying nation bear some responsibility for the crisis? Or, do we agree with former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton’s position that “our obligation was to give {Iraqi refugees} new institutions and provide security” and that we don’t “have an obligation to compensate {Iraqis} for the hardships of war”?

How have Sept. 11 and the war on terror changed our attitudes toward Arabs and Muslims? What are our security concerns when it comes to such refugees? The administration claims, and perhaps rightly so, that it has to be careful to weed out potential terrorists when processing the refugees. They also claim that admitting large numbers of Iraqis would make their return to Iraq more difficult when Iraq is finally “liberated."

Almost 4,000 of our troops have sacrificed their lives to, as we are told, give Iraqis some measure of security, liberty and democracy. But are these very same Iraqis not “good enough” to be let into our country?

Americans must address these questions and issues quickly and frankly. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children anxiously await our answers, answers that will reflect and perhaps redefine “the character of a nation.”

[Demeter]

1. They Are An Embarrassment To Bush/Cheney Et Al.

A living (or dying) reminder of the biggest mistake these crooks ever made. They must remain hidden so W's beautiful mind isn't disturbed.