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The case for partition
The report that the International Organization for Migration predicts as many as one million persons could flee Iraq in 2007 strengthens the case for Randall Parker’s proposed policy for Iraq. For some time Parker has been arguing that the U.S., instead of trying to maintain Iraq as a unitary state while the actual Shia and Sunnis are killing and ethnic cleansing each other, should actively assist in the partition of that country. Iraq, he points out, is partitioning whether we like it or not. We can ignore that fact, and let the partitioning take the most violent and murderous forms possible, or we can recognize that fact, and facilitate the process of partition, thus lessening the violence and also lessening the need for people to flee the country. I had been mildly open to Parker’s idea before now, but now, in light of the burgeoning refugee problem (and the ruinous effect it would have on the receiving countries in the West), it is starting to seem like an imperative.
Of course, the U.S. will reject Iraqi partition, for the same reason that we still have troops sitting in Bosnia 12 years after the Dayton Accords, keeping the Muslims, Serbs, and Croatians from engaging in mutual massacre: We believe in multiculturalism as the model for the world. We insist that mutually incompatible peoples live together under one government and keep killing each other, thus requiring our presence to stop the killing, rather than let them separate from each other and live in peace. And, by the same token, we would rather let millions of culturally incompatible people move to our country and turn it into a mess, than help establish conditions for them in their own countries enabling them to live under their own vine and fig tree. Email entry |