Not Our Problem

by digby

Atrios links to this article which explores the idea of the US accepting Iraqi refugees. I’ve thought about this quite a lot over the last two weeks; as we contemplate the consequences of the violent, chaotic occupation that led to their civil war, it seems to me this is the least we could do.

Of course, for political reasons, the Bush administraton will have none of it:

Arthur E. “Gene” Dewey, who was President Bush’s assistant secretary of state for refugee affairs until last year, said that “for political reasons the administration will discourage” the resettlement of Iraqi refugees in the United States “because of the psychological message it would send, that it is a losing cause.”

But Dewey said a tipping point has been reached that is bound to change US policy because so many refugees are convinced that they will not be able to return to Iraq. That tipping point was further weighted by Wednesday’s report by the Iraq Study Group that called for the eventual withdrawal of most US forces.

“I think there will increasingly be a moral obligation on the part of the United States” to allow resettlement by Iraqis here, Dewey said.

Fat chance. Here’s the problem. There are a whole bunch of people in the United States who think of Iraqis as terrorists, including a fair number of the military who have been taught to use that language. Even the Democratic Party uses that term.

Here’s a headline from World Net Daily a few years back: “Iraqi terrorists head to U.S. via Mexico?” As recently as last summer, the Harris Poll reported, “sixty-four percent say it is true that Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda” and “sixty-one percent of adults agree that invading and occupying Iraq has motivated more Islamic terrorists to attack the United States.” When Pete Hoekstra and Rick Santorum came out with that silly, bogus report that the WMD had been found, a large spike in the polling showed up due to the relentless flogging on wingnut radio. Kathryn Jean Lopez once gleefuly reported on The Corner that Americans “get the war on terror” because 70% believed that Saddam Hussein was tied to 9/11.

So, with right wing radio still going strong, the GOP being in the rabid minority once again whose only raison d’etre is the GWOT, a debate already raging about immigration and plain old racists like Trent Lott saying things like “they all look alike to me,” I doubt that the US will be taking in an influx of arab immigrants. It’s beyond the imagination.

It’s not like we haven’t been here before, is it?

The sad truth is that we have probably managed to make at least some Iraqis hostile enough to the US that they have turned to radical Islamic fundamentalism and have decided that we are The Enemy, even if their Shia or Sunni rivals are “the enemy.” As with so many things about this godforsaken war, it has many parallels to Vietnam — but it is more complicated and more dangerous by a factor of ten.

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