WE'VE DONE IT...

WE'VE DONE IT BEFORE, WE CAN DO IT AGAIN. Over the weekend, Sen. Ted Kennedy sparked discussion with his proposal to evacuate Iraqis who've been aiding American forces and who might consequently be targeted for death (a proposal, I might add, first made by George Packer in The New Republic's November special issue on Iraq). Wrote Kennedy:

Last year...America accepted only 202 Iraqi refugees, and next year we plan to accept approximately the same number....[B]eyond a congressionally mandated program that accepts 50 Iraqi translators from Iraq and Afghanistan each year, the administration has done nothing to resettle brave Iraqis who provided assistance in some way to our military. This lack of conscience is fundamentally unfair. We need to do much more to help Iraqi refugees, especially those who have helped our troops.

Today, The New York Times reports on the stinginess of the Bush administration's policy on admitting Iraqi refugees:

Until recently the Bush administration had planned to resettle just 500 Iraqis this year, a mere fraction of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who are now believed to be fleeing their country each month. State Department officials say they are open to admitting larger numbers, but are limited by a cumbersome and poorly financed United Nations referral system.�We�re not even meeting our basic obligation to the Iraqis who�ve been imperiled because they worked for the U.S. government,� said Kirk W. Johnson, who worked for the United States Agency for International Development in Falluja in 2005. �We could not have functioned without their hard work, and it�s shameful that we�ve nothing to offer them in their bleakest hour.�

Things were not always thus. In 1996, fighting broke out between the two different political parties in Iraqi Kurdistan, the KDP and the PUK, and the KDP invited the Iraqi national forces into the semi-autonomous Kurdish enclave to assist with the assault against the PUK. This instantly imperilled the lives of many Kurds who had been working with foreign aid organizations in the region, as Saddam Hussein's forces saw them as traitors. In response, the Clinton administration launched a humanitarian evacuation of the pro-American Kurds from Northern Iraq. Three waves of Iraqi Kurds were ultimately bused to an American air base in Turkey and then flown to Guam for screening prior to resettlement in the United States through Operation Pacific Haven/Quick Transit. The refugee crisis in Iraq was far less acute in 1996, and yet America gave refuge and asylum to 6,493 Iraqis who might otherwise have been killed for their work with representatives of western nations.

There is no logistical, financial or moral reason we can't launch such an intiative again.

--Garance Franke-Ruta