The Iraq nightmare gets jacked up to overdrive

Maybe we have to stay after all, if this is the alternative:

THE OTHER SURGE [Mark Krikorian]
Since it seems fairly certain to me now that we’re going to end up evacuating Baghdad’s green zone from the embassy roof in helicopters, what I’m worried about is the much more significant “surge” we’re going to have to deal with—Iraqi refugees, virtually all of them our Sunni enemies, being resettled by the hundreds of thousands in the United States. Thomas Friedman in today’s NY Times writes: “Of course, just leaving would be bad for us and terrible for those Iraqis who have worked with us. We need to give them all U.S. passports.” And that’s just what’s going to happen, just as France took in nearly 100,000 Harkis after the Algerian war, though the Iraqi flow here is likely to be an order of magnitude greater. The number coming here so far has been small, but it’s going to grow rapidly. Which is why in the future we need to factor in considerations of the immigration fallout before we launch foreign policy initiatives. For instance, the immigration created by our absurd intervention in Somalia has resulted in Somali cabbies at the Minneapolis Airport trying to impose Islamic strictures on travelers there (see this from a NY Sun story this week)—no one could have predicted that specific outcome, but something like it was bound to happen, and is a cost of involvement in the Islamic world. In the words of CAIR: “Now that the Muslims are here, they need to be accommodated.”
Posted at 2:08 PM

Of course, such an eventuality has been long anticipated by me and many commenters at this site, though, obviously, anticipating it and warning against it are not by themselves enough to stop it. As I wrote at VFR in October 2002:

Facing the Unpleasant Reality

If, as now seems increasingly likely, the United States invades Iraq, overthrows the Hussein regime, and occupies the country, then, even if the wider plans for multiple “regime changes” in the Arab-Muslim world that some policy intellectuals have advocated do not materialize, America will still be faced with an unprecedented set of imperial burdens in Southwest Asia. While some good may come from this situation, certain evils inimical to our country also seem inevitable. Among them: a vast distraction of attention and resources away from our pressing domestic problems toward a distant alien corner of the world; an unwanted flood of Muslim refugees [italics added]; a further expansion of the idea of America as a universal society leading and transforming the whole world with its universalist principles of equal freedom and diversity, rather than as a discrete nation under God pursuing its own destiny in its own land and among its own people; and, as a result, a further loss of our ability to preserve our nation against the forces of mass immigration, multiculturalism, and globalism. [Italics added.] These and other egregious consequences of a military engagement with Iraq must trouble all traditionalist conservatives. But, since the war seems a virtual certainty at this point, as well as a necessary act of self-defense, it may be more useful for us to think of positive ways to limit the harmful effects that the war will bring, rather than simply denouncing it as a mad mistake or sinister plot.

(Following the October 2002 blog entry is a lively discussion about why the Muslims hate us.)

- end of initial entry -

I asked Mark Krikorian, who is the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, how this influx of Iraqis into America could be stopped. He replied:

I don’t think there’s any way to stop it at this point—this is a bomb whose fuse was lit as soon as we invaded (or at least as soon as we decided to set up shop rather than just hand the place over to someone and leave).

I then asked Mr. Krikorian:

Why? Why can’t we say: you must go to some other Muslim land, not to America? There have been hundreds of thousands of emigres from Iraq; they haven’t gone to America, they’ve gone to Jordan, Syria, etc.

He replied:

They haven’t come here so far, and I think the administration has kept it that way on purpose. But once things completely collapse, the president (or his successor) will be preaching to us about our moral responsibility to take in those refugees that Arab nations won’t, and we’ll end up with lots of them. Geopolitical considerations will also be a factor—Jordan, for instance, could well be destabilized by the large-scale settlement of Iraqi Sunnis (as it was with the large scale settlement of “Palestinians,” who had to be suppressed in Black September). Now, I don’t care too much whether the Jordanian monarchy is overthrown, or for that matter if the Saudi regime is overthrown, but those considerations will nonetheless figure in our considerations.

The one hope we have is to raise the alarm now about a massive flow of Sunni refugees now, so as to try to scare off the White House, maybe even demand now that the White House commit to not undertaking a massive refugee resettlement here.

Steven H. writes:

In regards to the impending explosion of Muslim immigration, I believe that Iraq will almost certainly implode at some point. The liberals will surely seize that opportunity to put one of the final nails in our country’s casket. Since Bush and many if not most of the Republicans and so-called conservative talking heads will gladly go along with implementing this catastrophe, I see little hope for our nation beyond that point should it transpire. I sent the piece from NRO as well as the quote from John Stone to Bill Bennett and Tom Tancredo. We can’t let this happen.

If you have some positive spin on where we are heading, I could sure use it now. Sometimes I think the only solution at some point will be for America to split. Let the Left go. They have destroyed and trampled on our Constitution and have turned it into a suicide pact. Let us start a new nation under God – the God of the Bible and recognize our Christian heritage along with the wisdom and courage bestowed upon us by our Founding Fathers.

VFR has original thinkers writing to it. Maureen C. offers an unexpected angle that shows a way out of the Iraq refugee trap:

Thomas Friedman wrote: “Of course, just leaving would be bad for us and terrible for those Iraqis who have worked with us. We need to give them all U.S. passports.”

Wake up Friedman. There is no need to worry about the fate of the “Iraqis who have worked with us.”

These local Iraqi workers couldn’t have “collaborated” with us without having the tacit permission of their local sheiks and imams. Without that tacit permission, they would have been dead meat upon arrival home after their first day of work—killed by Shia or Sunni insurgents. The so-called friendly American collaborators are, in fact, the Sunni and Shia “eyes and ears” inside the Green Zone, etc. It is in the local leaders’ interest to let them work there.

Therefore, the Sunni and Shia “friends” should be left behind on those rooftops. They’ll do just fine, after we leave.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 12, 2007 03:30 PM | Send