Protecting the collaborators
For the last month, I've been talking about how Iraqis waiting for an announcement of a US withdrawal have virtually stalled every effort towards the US goals in Iraq. Tell me this doesn't say it, writ large.
They don't see that peaceful Iraq coming about in anything near the short term, and these are the "optimists" who are working towards the US goals.
They're envisioning the helicopters of Vietnam and don't want to be the ones left at the embassy. Can you blame them?
The American ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan C. Crocker, has asked the Bush administration to take the unusual step of granting immigrant visas to all Iraqis employed by the U.S. government in Iraq because of growing concern that they will quit and flee the country if they cannot be assured eventual safe passage to the United States.
They don't see that peaceful Iraq coming about in anything near the short term, and these are the "optimists" who are working towards the US goals.
They're envisioning the helicopters of Vietnam and don't want to be the ones left at the embassy. Can you blame them?
posted by mikevotes at
7:32 AM
6 Comments:
As I sit here on my front porch in the woods of New Hampshire, the only sounds coming from the breeze tussled leaves, the dog routing around in the woods and my son whistling in the back yard, Iraq is a world away. But only a world away in the literal sense. Emotionally it is with me every day.
It's not just the human tragedy I lament -- the dehumanization of a generation of soldiers, the destruction of innumerable families, both in Iraq and at home -- but I also suffer a sense of guilt. As a citizen in a representative democracy, I am, by association, a member of a class of people who have enabled the most repugnant assault on freedom since the Manifest Destiny movement of the 19th century.
The current leaders of my country -- and the lock-stepping partisans in congress -- represent all the fears of our founders.
Just some thought from the front porch...
By
-epm, at 8:28 AM
That's very well said.
By
mikevotes, at 11:13 AM
Great piece of writing epm. Too bad you will be branded as 'soft on security'.
By
Anonymous, at 11:57 AM
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By
Anonymous, at 4:14 PM
No spam.
By
mikevotes, at 6:28 PM
In know (hope) you were being ironic, but I like to say I'm not soft on security, I'm hard on stupidity.
By
-epm, at 7:56 PM
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