The inevitable result of U.S. intrusion into a foreign country

Jonathan L. writes:

As if on schedule, there is a proposal in the latest issue of The New Republic (subscriber only) that we let as many Iraqi immigrants as possible into the United States in recognition and gratitude for the services they provided us during the occupation: “Those Iraqis who have had anything to do with the occupation and its promises of democracy will be among the first to be killed: the translators, the government officials, the embassy employees, the journalists, the organizers of women’s and human rights groups … If the United States leaves Iraq, our last shred of honor and decency will require us to save as many of these Iraqis as possible.”

This is the first articulation of the idea I’ve seen in print, but the idea probably has been percolating around a bit. The author of course does not address the fact that thanks to our heedless immigration and refugee policies there are now tens of thousands of Somali Muslims in the United States, either pushing on us the beginnings sharia law (no alcohol in Minneapolis taxi cabs) or going home to fight the jihad against Ethiopia, after which they’ll return to the United States or Canada with their new military training, their new jihadist connections, and their new wounds whose therapy the Western taxpayer will end up paying for.

This of course is the outcome that VFR reader David B. has been worrying about since before the invasion of Iraq. He writes:

Yes, I had warned about this, and believed it canceled out any reason for invading Iraq. However, I had expected GWB to propose it first. I didn’t think that The New Republic liked Arabs all that much. What it means is that they are so fanatical on the subject of replacing America’s historic population that they aren’t particular about who they bring in.

Jonathan L. continues:

Here’s another quote from the article that proves that, yes, the author—George Packer, who also has a book on Iraq called The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq—is calling for a massive influx of refugees: “We should start issuing visas in Baghdad, as well as in the regional embassies in Mosul, Kirkuk, Hilla, and Basra. We should issue them liberally, which means that we should vastly increase our quota for Iraqi refugees. (Last year, it was fewer than 200.) We should prepare contingency plans for massive airlifts and ground escorts. We should be ready for desperate and angry crowds at the gates of the Green Zone and U.S. bases.”

Regarding David B.’s comments: The New Republic is not anti-Arab. I think, in a way, it is a marvelous example of the unprincipled exception. Editor-in-chief Martin Peretz was a member of the New Left in his younger days, yet eventually his particularist love of Israel and America drove a wedge between him and his radical comrades and he has since made The New Republic a vehicle for settling old ideological scores with them. Still, The New Republic is unabashedly a liberal publication, and so was a leading booster of intervention in Kosovo (yes, Albanians are not Arabs but they are still Muslims). Given the muddled strategic and moral reasons for intervening so one-sidedly over there (thanks to us, Albanian Muslims could ethnically cleanse their ethnic cleansers) I suspect it was partly to reassure itself that all those years of defending Israel had not hardened its heart against all Muslims that TNR jumped at the chance to defend a few “worthy” (i.e. victimized) ones.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 27, 2006 05:40 PM | Send