Posted on 09/27/2007 10:18:26 AM PDT by PreciousLiberty
The numbers are so staggering that they are hard to process mentally and impossible to process logistically: each month some 60,000 Iraqis are voting with their feet against the surge of U.S. forces by fleeing their homes. Since the invasion, more than 2.5 million Iraqis have left for neighboring countries, while 2.2 million have been forcibly displaced within Iraq - too poor to escape the country or blocked from transitioning through more peaceful provinces, which in recent months have erected checkpoints to keep them out. To put it in stark historical terms: the war has created the largest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948.
Here is what it looks like on the ground: in two short years, a million Iraqi refugees have poured into Syria, a country of 19 million. In U.S.-population terms, this would be the equivalent of 15 million Iraqis arriving on our shores. Overwhelmed by the deluge, Syria has said it will begin requiring visas for Iraqis next month, the practical equivalent of shutting its doors, while Jordan, which has admitted 750,000 Iraqis, closed most of its border crossings earlier this year.
...
The brain drain is a legitimate concern, but the welfare of Iraqis fleeing for their lives cannot be held hostage to Bush's romantic dreams for a "free Iraq." The U.S. lost the war in Iraq. At the heart of the debacle in Iraq has been the repeated failure to deliver a more secure life for Iraqis. It is long past time that we stop simply debating the "fate of Iraq" and start addressing the fate of Iraqis.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I don't suppose it occurred to this wingnut that those refugees might return once things stabilize. At any rate, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.
The werewolves in Germany disliked our presence there after the war too. But then they were f’n nazis so I don’t really care what they thought.
If the insurgents are leaving Iraq for Syria, good.
Or that they’re folks we don’t want in Iraq, like Sunni/Ba’athists?
Yeah we lost, didn’t you hear? Harry Reid said so.
(Do I really need /s?)
Until you get some real law and order (AQ defeated, Sadr dead, Iran evicted) then people will continue to leave. The solution is in front of us, not turning and running.
What the hell are you talking about? Our success in Iraq involves not only pushing out insurgents, but securing Iraq so that it can defend itself when we leave. Allowing normal Iraqis to feel safe in their neighborhoods will make them more amenable to helping us keep insurgents and terrorists out (see: military civilian affairs 101).
This is a timely article (pardon the pun) and sheds some light on a problem that the military must deal with. They can’t be loosing viable partners in the struggle to secure Iraq. If they do, it will be impossible to secure any major area of the country.
Your stance, sir, is defeatism at its most insidious.
Once you add all those we have supposedly killed, to those that the terrorists HAVE killed, to all those supposedly running away, there should be no one left but our guys.
So Iraqis are leaving the country for fear of violence. Guess what? It's not us that is killing them. Who is killing them? Why, the al Qaeda that you deny is in Iraq is killing them. Killing them and even killing children indiscriminately.
And this indiscriminate killing is somehow our fault? We are giving our lives to protect them. But I guess that doesn't square with your magazine's objectives.
What a pathetic magazine, and an incredible waste of trees, I might add.
If I recollect, the large refugee camps set up by the UN were unused. Empty.
Just another lie by the MSM.
And the methodology of how the count was done would be.... This is like a Lancett study. Just interview a hundred people and multiply by ten thousand.
They call this a news story? Sounds like the crap you see on Dailykos (or Ron Paul forums).
Uh, yeah. Actually, a lot of the people leaving are Iraqi Christians who have found it is no longer safe to live there.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
Time has BEEN embedded with the insurgents since the time before the capture of Saddam.
Frontline had an interview with the reporter. I think he is Australian.
Hell, we’ve taken out Al Qaeda in Iraq’s “Second In Command” at least 5 or 6 times. That should count for sometinhg. :D
However one views it, it doesn’t sound good when they start talking about admitting thousands of Iraqi refugees to the US.
ROFL, I was wondering the same thing. Is he on the same thread?
Q.E.D., Samantha. Good on ya.
The other possibility is that many are returning to the areas that they were originally from. Saddam had a way of moving people about.
If she's a journalist, I'm a journalist. : )
Yep, so overwhelming they're gonna close the border--next month, so y'all hurry down now and get in line so Reuters has a good fauxteaux-op, y'hear?
As for "The US has lost the war in Iraq", did that happen in the last few hours??
I didn't get that meme-o.
Sorry-a$$ed dhimmi-socialists can't surrender quick enough.
Isn’t she the chick that made the “I wanna do Obama” video? ;)
President George W. Bush is in denial about the refugee crisis. He claimed this month that “ordinary life is beginning to return” and warned that with a U.S. departure, “Iraq could face a humanitarian nightmare.” But he has refused to deal with the nightmare already under way.
Umm, Samantha you dope, if we leave Iraq those same type of people that are fleeing will simply be killed.. which is more a nightmare, people fleeing a WARZONE for Pete’s sake or people being murdered in cold blood?
She spent 2005-06 working in the office of U.S. Senator Barack Obama as a foreign policy fellow, where she was credited with sparking off and directing Obama’s interest in the Darfur conflict
Samantha Power (born 1970) is a journalist, writer, and professor. She is currently affiliated with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Power was raised in Ireland before emigrating to the United States in 1979. She attended Lakeside High School in Atlanta, GA. She was a member of the cross country team as well the basketball team. She is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. From 1993 to 1996, she covered the Yugoslav wars for U.S. News & World Report, The Boston Globe, The Economist, and The New Republic.
She is a scholar of foreign policy especially as it relates to human rights, genocide, and AIDS. Her book “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 2003. She endorses the Genocide Intervention Network.
In 2004, Power was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 top scientists and thinkers of that year[2]. She appears in Charles Ferguson’s 2007 documentary No End in Sight which alleges numerous missteps by the Bush administration in the U.S. war in Iraq.
The purpose of this article is to suggest that the "surge" isn't working. But just read the author's tricky wording a little more closely. These numbers include total refugees over the past 4-1/2 years. Has the refugee problem grown recently? Who knows? This article certainly doesn't say.
I will say that it wouldn't surprise me if we--and the Euroswine who were allied with Saddam at the start of the war, and wanted us to fail--have had an unfortunate policy with refugees. It's hard not to sympathize with innocents fleeing for their lives, but it's questionable policy to take in the best and the brightest and deprive Iraq of a hopeful future as a consequence.
I would add that the first President Bush took in a number of Saddam's Republican Guards after the First Gulf War, and some of those guys appear to have been troublemakers, and were perhaps involved in the bombing at OKC.
So, first of all, the article gives a misleading impression by cooking the dates and the numbers. But second, I'm not necessarily confident that Bush always thinks things through on refugee policy.
The National Health Service in the UK took in Muslim refugee doctors because they needed cheap physicians to keep the system going. And look what happened as a result.
Another instance was the permanent UN refugee camps in Palestine, which have fed the Intifada there every since the creation of Israel. Huge mistake. And they are still doing it.
Samantha Power
Around 1968, in case you weren’t paying attention.
from Wiki.. She has also been involved with efforts to increase media attention about the Darfur conflict. In 2006, she contributed to "Screamers", a movie telling about Darfur, Armenian and other genocides of 20-21st centuries.
These leftists are beyond contempt. They are evil to their core.
No source for these figures is cited. Who says these figures are correct? During 2006 we were asked several times to count the number of internally displaced persons in western Al Anbar. Every time the results were the same... very few could be found. The flow of people at the Ports of entry at Trebil (Jordan) and Whalid (Syria) went both ways. We noted that numerous leaders (sheiks, mayors, etc.), had gone to Jordan to escape assassination but planned to return when it was safe. There were many “insurgents” who fled to Syria to avoid capture or death. There were no internal refugee camps in Al Anbar and there was never any discussion of refugee camps in Jordan or Syria. So, thru January 2007 I can state factually that the situation described in this article did NOT exist. Again, where do these numbers come from? Being a “fellow” or some such at Harvard does not give automatic creditability... in fact, today, being from such an institution is cause for suspicion due to the politicized environment that has replaced the learning environment there.
http://209.157.64.201/focus/f-news/1518385/posts
Iraqi’s Thank America (Wow, this is moving!)
That’s where they get another 100 grand or so on their count!
“I don’t suppose it occurred to this wingnut that those refugees might
return once things stabilize.”
Maybe.
Maybe not. The USA is the future home for a good number of them.
Bush will boost flow of Iraqi refugees
Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau |
Sep. 23, 2007 | RICHARD S. DUNHAM
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1900633/posts
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