Gingrich says “millions” of Iraqis will be slaughtered

Steven H. writes:

Newt says that if we leave Iraq millions of people that have sided with and helped U.S. will be slaughtered upon our departure. The number may be high, there are I am sure many that fit this bill.

What would you do with them?

LA replies:

First, think of what this means. According to Gingrich, the existing government that we are supposedly strengthening so that it can govern, is so weak and defenseless that the moment we leave, “millions” of people will be slaughtered. How could such a weak and vulnerable government ever be made strong enough to defend itself? The real meaning of what Gingrich is saying is that we have to stay there forever in order to prevent a slaughter of millions of people.

Second, I don’t think it’s true. Which millions of our allies is he talking about? If anything, the main people being protected by our presence are the Sunni minority, who have been our enemies. The Shi’ite majority government that we’re helping is not threatened; it’s the Sunnis who are threatened. If I’m wrong on this someone can straighten me out.

Finally, let’s say it was true. I have addressed this issue before as plainly as I could. To say that our response to the ruin of Iraq by the Iraqis must be to allow millions of Iraqis to come here and ruin our country is insane. There is no morality in allowing America, as well as Iraq, to be ruined. The best option may be to help Iraq partition into three ethnic zones. But whether we successfully help Iraq partition, or whether we help endangered Iraqis settle elsewhere in the Muslim world, or whether Iraq falls into murderous slaughter, under no circumstances should we allow Iraqis to come here.

Scott in PA writes:

I don’t believe there are “millions” of Iraqis who are cooperating with the U.S. and who’d be endangered upon a U.S. withdrawal. If that were the case, the U.S. military would be flooded with calls informing them where the IEDs were planted. Instead they go off with maddening regularity.

On your second point, I also don’t want Iraqis settling in the U.S.; however, I have sympathy for Iraqi Christians, whose lives have turned into a living hell. What about them? I think we should help them resettle in other ME countries with small Christian populations (Lebanon? Syria?), and, as a last resort, take some here.

LA replies:

It’s horrible. Has the Bush administration ever acknowledged that its Democracy crusade has made Iraq unlivable for its Christian population? Have Bush’s Christian conservative supporters acknowledged it? Have Bush’s leftist enemies?

Wikipedia says that there are about 800,000 Assyrians in Iraq, so that’s about three percent of the Iraqi population of about 25 million. Of the million that Wikipedia says have left, 40 percent are Assyrians, that would be 400,000 have left or half the Assyrian population. But according to the NYT magazine article earlier this year about Iraqi refugees, a total of two million have left Iraq. If the 40 percent Assyrian figure holds among the second million who have left, that would mean that effectively all 800,000 Assyrians have left Iraq. In any case, it would appear that at least half the Christian population has left Iraq.

Further, the tripartite partition of Iraq would not suffice to protect the Christians, since it is precisely the transfer of rule from the secular Saddam regime to the Muslims that has resulted in the persecution of the Christians (just as the breakup of the multi-ethnic tolerant Hapsburg empire resulted in the persecution of minorities among the resulting ethnostates; and the same with the breakup of the multiethnic tolerant Yugoslavia). Yet the Christians are not a large enough part of the Iraqi population to make up a distinct fourth part of a partitioned Iraq, are they? And also, how many would want to return?

A partitioned Iraq needs to make some provision for the safety of the Christians, or they need to be resettled in Mideastern countries with Christian populations. We cannot bring them here.

LA writes:

Here’s the comment by Newt Gingrich being interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that Steven H. mentioned in an earlier entry::

GINGRICH: What I would say to any Democrat who wants America to leave is quite simple. Millions of Iraqis have sided with the United States. They are known in their neighborhoods. They are known in their cities. If we abandon them, they are going to be massacred.

How can you, in good conscience, walk away from these decent people and leave them behind to a fate which we’ve seen, for example, in Afghanistan, where the Taliban recently was machine-gunning girls as they walked to school because the Taliban is determined to stop women from getting educated?

We are faced with evil opponents. Those opponents need to be defeated. And if General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker come back in September and say, “We actually can win this thing,” I want to understand the rationale that says, “No, we don’t want to let America win. Let’s legislate defeat for the United States.”

Now, I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself, I really am. But if there are people in Iraq who have the desire and ability to massacre millions of Iraqis as soon as we leave, then obviously the only way to protect those millions of innocents is to destroy utterly their would be killers. And that means waging total war against all the factions who want to kill their enemies. I can’t imagine what such a war would consist of, and neither can Gingrich. Obviously the present activities under Gen. Petraeus, even if successful in pacifying (if I may use that word) more and more parts of the country, is not of a permanent nature. If we left, the violence would erupt again, and the “millions” would be threatened again. So we must remain in Iraq forever. There is no other way to understand the real import of our policy.

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