Shame

Let's see how this plays out. Thus far, the story is of everything gone wrong in government bureaucracy. If the right people can make the right noise, however, that can easily be fixed:

During his nearly four years as a translator for U.S. forces in Iraq, Saman Kareem Ahmad was known for his bravery and hard work. "Sam put his life on the line with, and for, Coalition Forces on a daily basis," wrote Marine Capt. Trent A. Gibson.

Gibson's letter was part of a thick file of support -- including commendations from the secretary of the Navy and from then-Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus -- that helped Ahmad migrate to the United States in 2006, among an initial group of 50 Iraqi and Afghan translators admitted under a special visa program.

Last month, however, the U.S. government turned down Ahmad's application for permanent residence, known as a green card. His offense: Ahmad had once been part of the Kurdish Democratic Party, which U.S. immigration officials deemed an "undesignated terrorist organization" for having sought to overthrow former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Read on, and feel your blood reach the boiling point. I don't have to tell you what sort of guy Ahmad is. You meet his sort among the Iraqis Michael Yon and Michael J. Totten encounter in their travels with the U.S. troops on the ground.

In an interview Friday at Quantico Marine Corps Base, where he teaches Arabic language and culture to Marines deploying to Iraq, Ahmad's voice quavered, and his usually precise English failed him. "I am shamed," he said. He has put off his plans to marry a seamstress who tailors Marine uniforms. "I don't want my family live in America; they feel ashamed I'm with a terrorist group. I want them to be proud for what I did for the United States Marine Corps," said Ahmad, 38.

... Ahmad left the country after he was branded a "collaborator" from mosque pulpits in Anbar province and posters calling for his death began appearing there.

Seems he may be caught in the ... what's the opposite of a loophole? A stranglehole? ... described here.

Language in the Patriot Act and related bills defines terrorism as “any activity which is unlawful under the laws of the place it was committed.” Current law also bars admission to the U.S. for anyone who ever provided “material support” to any armed group.

The terrorism definition is too broad. The Warsaw ghetto uprising of World War II doesn't belong in the same file as al-Qaida.

The laws also make no account of whether the opposition group is friend or foe to us.

If so, all the more reason to fix it. Fast.

Depressingly, as far as I can tell, so far this story has gotten attention mostly from two sets of bloggers, both generallly unfriendly to the American effort in Iraq. One is the set whose real fixation is opening the national borders to immigrants. The other is people who despise everything the U.S. is trying to do in Iraq as a sham, and among them are writers who in other settings (i.e., when not temporarily useful to bash the Bush Administration) are likely to characterise such men as Ahmad as Quislings who deserve what they get.

[Hat tip, Reader, for the article; the opinions about it are mine].

No Friend Left Behind Update

[posted by Callimachus]

Crocker's warning:

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq warned that it may take the U.S. government as long as two years to process and admit nearly 10,000 Iraqi refugees referred by the United Nations for resettlement to the United States, because of bureaucratic bottlenecks.

In a bluntly worded State Department cable titled "Iraqi Refugee Processing: Can We Speed It Up?" Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker noted that the Department of Homeland Security had only a handful of officers in Jordan to vet the refugees.

Bush administration officials in Washington immediately disputed several of Crocker's claims.

Still, the "sensitive" but unclassified memo, sent Sept. 7, laid out a wrenching, ground-level view of the U.S. government's halting response to Iraq's refugee crisis. Human rights groups and independent analysts say thousands of desperate Iraqis who have worked alongside Americans now find themselves the targets of insurgents and sectarian militias, prompting many of them to seek residency in the United States or Europe.

Although the subject was little addressed during Crocker's and Gen. David H. Petraeus's public testimony to Congress last week on the state of the war, the envoy has raised the issue in two cables in the past two months. The subject is likely to be discussed when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets this week with congressional leaders to outline the administration's refugee admissions goals for 2008 and when the Senate resumes its Iraq war debate.

... Each DHS case officer in Jordan can interview only four cases a day on average because of the in-depth questioning required, and just a handful of officers were in the region, partly because Syria refuses to issue visas to DHS personnel, Crocker said. "It would take this team alone almost two years to complete" interviews on 10,000 U.N. referrals, he estimated.

As more Iraqis flee, he noted, delays are "likely to grow considerably."

"Refugees who have fled Iraq continue to be a vulnerable population while living in Jordan and Syria," he wrote. "The basis for . . . resettlement is the deteriorating protection environment in these countries."

Meanwhile, shame in Britain:

It is six weeks since the Government promised an “urgent review” of the situation of Iraqis whose lives are in danger because of their work as interpreters for the British Army. During that time, the 5,000 British troops have pulled back from central Basra to the airport, mainly for their own safety. Nothing has been done for the interpreters. Several have already been tortured and killed. Some have received death threats from militia thugs who accuse them of collaboration. Their homes are unprotected and their families live in terror. Out of loyalty and honour, they remain at their posts, helping British troops understand the dangers and the confusion. In return, they have been contemptuously brushed aside, as though they were trouble-makers demanding special favours. This is utterly shameful.

And with good cause for it:

Nine or ten masked men went to the home of Moayed Ahmed Khalaf in the al-Hayaniah district of Basra and beat him in front of his wife and mother, four sources told The Times. They then dragged him away, telling the frantic women that they would bring him back shortly. Khalaf’s body was found on Al Qa’ed Street later that night. He had been shot multiple times, according to Colonel Ali Manshed, commander of the Shatt-al-Arab police station.

A cousin, a close friend and two other interpreters all told The Times that Khalaf, 31, had worked for the British at their Basra airport base. Colonel Manshed said that everyone questioned by the police had said Khalaf was an interpreter, adding: “He was a good man, everyone liked him and there was no other reason to kill him.”

However Major Mike Shearer, a spokesman at the airport base, said that the army could find no record of Khalaf having worked for the army.

The Times (London) has been dutifully covering the fates of the Iraqi interpreters and others who helped them in Basra, now that the British have withdrawn. It's not a pretty picture.

"Quislings"

[posted by Callimachus]

Neil Clark in the Guardian has your hardcore anti-Iraq War reaction to this story about Britain abandoning the Iraqi interpreters who helped its soldiers during the occupation.

Omitting the predictable smug reactions, like, "Oh, so if we 'liberated' them how come they're so afraid," I'll cut to the chase. And it's ugly:

The most nauseating aspect of the campaign is the way we are repeatedly told that the Iraqi interpreters worked for "us".

Who exactly is meant by "us"? In common with millions of other Britons, I did not want the Iraq war, an illegal invasion of a sovereign state engineered and egged on by a tiny minority of fanatical neoconservatives whose first loyalty was not to Britain but to the cause of Pax Americana.

... The interpreters did not work for "us", the British people, but for themselves - they are paid around £16 a day, an excellent wage in Iraq - and for an illegal occupying force. Let's not cast them as heroes. The true heroes in Iraq are those who have resisted the invasion of their country.

As Seumas Milne wrote in yesterday's Guardian: "More than any other single factor, it has been the war of attrition waged by Iraq's armed resistance that has successfully challenged the world's most powerful army and driven the demand for withdrawal to the top of the political agenda in Washington."

If more Iraqis had followed the example of the interpreters and collaborated with British and American forces, it is likely that the cities of Iran and Syria would now be lying in rubble.

... There is a simple answer to that "practical military issue": let's do all we can to keep the British army out of war zones. And in the meantime, let's do all we can to keep self-centred mercenaries who betrayed their fellow countrymen and women for financial gain out of Britain.

If that means some of them may lose their lives, then the responsibility lies with those who planned and supported this wicked, deceitful and catastrophic war, and not those of us who tried all we could to stop it.

At least in Britain they keep the title of "leftist." Over here, they soil the good name of "liberal."

No Friend Left Behind Update

Our allies are alert to the realities. "It's the right thing to do."

Before withdrawing its 480 combat troops from Iraq next month, Denmark is pulling out about a dozen Iraqi interpreters and their families.

The translators have worked with the Danes in the southern city of Basra, a risky job that has turned them into traitors in the eyes of militants fighting the U.S.-led coalition. The government decided in June to offer all the interpreters working for Danish forces a chance to seek asylum.

The United States and Britain have been reluctant to accept large numbers of Iraqi asylum-seekers — including those who worked for their military or civilian operations. The Danish move came only after months of heated debate.

"It's the right thing to do," said Capt. Joergen Christian Nyholm, who returned to Denmark in February after commanding a mechanized infantry company in Basra for six months. "My personal opinion is that they are at a pretty high risk."

The issue of what to do with translators and other aides to coalition forces highlights the larger question of Iraqi refugees.

Since the start of the war, some 2 million Iraqis have fled to neighboring Syria and Jordan. An equal number are displaced within Iraq. Only a fraction has been admitted to the West, which fears a flood of refugees or letting in potential terrorists.

"It is very difficult to acknowledge the seriousness of the Iraqi refugee crisis without conceding the extent of the policy failures in Iraq which have precipitated the crisis," said Tom Porteous, London director of Human Rights Watch.

Ironically, Sweden, which isn't even part of the coalition, has taken in more Iraqi refugees than any other Western country has — though it is now tightening its asylum rules.

The United States has admitted fewer than 800 Iraqis since the start of the war but has promised to take in nearly 7,000 more starting later this year.

"We're working aggressively to try to process Iraqi refugees who have been classified as refugees by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said this month. "While we want to meet our humanitarian obligations here, we also want to make sure we do so in such a way that our borders and the American people are protected."

Particularly at risk are the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have worked for — or are currently employed by — U.S.-led coalition members. Their work has involved everything from translating to driving. Many of their colleagues have died in attacks directed at coalition forces; others have been abducted and killed outside of work.

"These people are particularly targeted, and of course people know who they are," said Bjarte Vandvik, secretary-general of the European Council of Refugees and Exiles.

One Iraqi refugee living in Stockholm, Sweden, said he quit his job for a Baghdad construction company in June 2005 after it was contracted to do work for U.S. troops at the Al-Taji military base. He worried that working for the Americans would make him a target for militants — fears that proved well-founded three months later when the head of the company was killed, he said.

"It was very dangerous," said the 42-year-old engineer. "There was only one road to get there, and anyone could watch you go in." He asked not to be named because he feared for the safety of family members still living in Iraq.

In May, a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives proposed that over the next four years the U.S. accept up to 60,000 Iraqis who worked for at least a year with the U.S. or U.N., affiliated contractors or subcontractors or American-based non-governmental organizations. The Senate is considering similar legislation.

Translators may get special attention. In June, the U.S. government launched a resettlement program to process Iraqis living in Jordan who have worked as translators for the U.S. government or military or who worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority. The program provides a way to apply for refugee status separate from the UNHCR referral process and will be run by the International Organization for Migration.

Britain granted asylum outright to about 100 Iraqi individuals and families from 2003 to 2005, the latest year for which statistics are available, according to reports posted on the Home Office Web site. In addition, more than 2,500 Iraqis who were not recognized as refugees were allowed to stay in the country on a temporary basis.

The initial refusal rate for applications from Iraq in 2005 was 91 percent, though the number accepted may have risen after appeals. The Home Office said final figures after appeals for Iraqi applications were not available.

Smaller European allies are also grappling with the issue.

Poland has a few dozen Iraqis working for its 900 troops in the Qadisiyah and Wasit provinces. The current mission ends Dec. 31 and could be extended, but Defense Ministry spokesman Jaroslaw Rybak said the government is already discussing how to deal with the interpreters in the event of a withdrawal.

"We are aware of the problem and we are working on it," he said. "We will not leave these people alone."

Spain, which withdrew from Iraq in 2004, offered asylum to dozens of Iraqis who helped Spanish troops or diplomats, the government said.

The Foreign Ministry in Italy, which pulled out of Iraq in 2005, could not say whether it had made any similar offer.

Czech Defense Ministry spokeswoman Jan Pejsek said that country, which has 90 troops under British command in southern Iraq, had no plans to make any special arrangements for the "few translators" working for the Czechs. "This may change when we'll be pulling out," he added.

In Denmark, pressure intensified on the government to do something for the 22 interpreters working for the Danish troops after reports surfaced this spring that an Iraqi interpreter working for a Danish aid agency was abducted and killed.

In June, Defense Minister Soeren Gade said most of them would be given entry visas so that they could travel to Denmark and apply for asylum here. The asylum claims are considered likely to be approved. The remainder wanted to stay in the Middle East but will be offered financial help or jobs at Danish missions.

An additional 130 Iraqis who had worked with the Danish military, Foreign Ministry or police could be considered for similar help, the government said.

Refugee groups welcomed the Danish plan, which even won the approval of the Danish People's Party, a nationalist party on whose support the center-right government depends.

"We had the new reports from our intelligence that stated that these people would be executed and liquidated after the Danish troops had departed, and that was of course a threat that we could not live with, so we had to change our position," said Soeren Espersen, the party's foreign policy spokesman.

At the Army Operational Command in Karup, western Denmark, Nyholm recalled how an interpreter lent a helping hand during an ambush on Dec. 28 in northern Basra.

"One of my machine gunners ran out of ammo," Nyholm said. "He was looking down his armored personnel carrier for more ammo, but the interpreter had already prepared it for him."

He added, laughing: "That was not expected, but he was maybe also fighting for his life."

Too bad the reporters saved the most telling anecdote for the end.

No Friend Left Behind (Backstory)

A small story from a small paper in wide-open West Texas celebrates the life and career of a hard-edged local DA's office investigator on the occasion of his retirement.

He's a cowboy, in the part of the world where that is a high compliment. He's an expert in cracking cold cases, and putting crooks with nicknames like "Snake" behind bars for a long time. He will tell you straight up what he thinks of you. And yet, "J.D. (for Jerrold Dwayne) is the kindest person I have ever known," said [Mario] Tinajero .... "He treats everybody equally and is not prejudiced at all.

"He looks at both sides of the coin and is one of the toughest people I have ever seen, physically and mentally. He can work 24 hours a day. He is unbelievable. He doesn't have to do the things he does and I don't see how he has endured so much."

Along the way, we learn part of what moves him:

Of all his experiences in a rich and sometimes difficult life, J. D. Luckie's despair at abandoning villagers to their fate in Vietnam has motivated him more powerfully than any.

The 58-year-old native Houstonian joined the Marine Corps after graduating from high school at Travis Air Force Base near San Francisco and served 19 months in Vietnam with the Corps' Civil Action Program.

Just having retired as a district attorney's investigator, he supervised a combat-buffeted 600-man international police force in Kosovo from 1999-2000 and pursued a series of cold cases as a result of his Vietnam-related regret.

"We worked with two villages, one friendly and the other non-friendly, near Dong Ha and the mouth of the Cua Viet River in the northern provinces," Luckie recalled. "We were like the Marines' Green Berets.

"I felt guilty when the Ninth Regiment of the Third Marines pulled out in November 1969 because a lot of people I knew in that village probably never made it out of there. I volunteered for Kosovo to try to set right the wrong done to those people. We walked off and left them and that's troublesome."

Hobbled by back surgeries for three ruptured discs and a mysteriously fractured vertebrae and blocked leg arteries, he would accept the invitation of his Kosovo employer, Dyn Corp, to serve in Iraq if he could regain his health. "I would do it for the children," he said.

"The ones who always get hurt are the elderly and children."

[Read the whole thing, if you have the time. You'll encounter lines like, " 'The U.N. said that was politically incorrect and I used some words about part of my anatomy.' "]

Vietnam and the passive betrayal of its people still was with him when he served in Kosovo:

Luckie had met and been befriended by the five-member Dragojlo family in Mitrovica after a rocket propelled grenade blew him over a car. He worked through the U.S. State Department to move them to Amarillo upon returning for them in September 2001.

"I had a concussion and broken ribs and we didn't have a lot of corpsmen," he said. "The Dragojlos bandaged and fed me and then they got a death message from the Serbs on their door. I wasn't going to let the same thing happen to them that happened to those 60-70 people in that village in Vietnam."

Note to Rest of World: Despite what your media may show you (and it won't show you J.D. Luckie), this is cowboy ethics at work. This is an America.

No Friend Left Behind (Update)

Those who boast they warned the rest of us of the 'Pottery Barn rules' -- if we break it, we bought it -- now want to leave the store without paying.

[posted by Callimachus]

Congress finished work this week on a step toward remedying the injustice of Iraqi interpreters who have helped us but who are denied immigration rights into the U.S.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday passed legislation granting special immigration visas to hundreds of Iraqi and Afghan translators whose lives are endangered because they helped U.S. forces.

By a vote of 412-8, the House passed the legislation that was also embraced by the Senate earlier this year.

The measure, which President George W. Bush is expected to sign into law, would grant up to 500 special visas for the foreign translators and interpreters who have helped in the U.S. war effort.

"These translators and interpreters who serve bravely alongside our troops need our immediate assistance. Singled out as collaborators, many are now targets by death squads, militias, and al-Qaeda," said Rep. Howard Berman, a California Democrat.

... Lawmakers have complained that last year, the United States accepted only 202 Iraqis out of its 70,000 refugee slots worldwide, despite the worsening refugee crisis.

The House of Representatives bill was H.R.1790, a bill that would "amend the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006 to expand the provision of special immigrant status for certain aliens, including translators or interpreters, serving with Federal agencies in Iraq and Afghanistan."

The bill was sponsored by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska and co-sponsored by Berman. The Senate passed its version of the bill (S.1104 April 12 by unanimous consent). It got through the House with bipartisan support, on a vote of 412-8. The eight opposed, all Republicans, were Deal (Georgia), Gingrey, Goode, King (Iowa), Kingston, Paul, Tancredo, and Whitfield.

* * *

Britain's Channel 4 picks up on the plight of Iraqi translators who have worked for and with the British military. Not surprisingly, the threats they face now are similar to those the American terps live (and die) with. But their prospect of salvation is even weaker:

For less than £10 a day, hundreds of Iraqis are putting their lives on the line as interpreters for the British Army in Basra. Many have now fled, having received death threats.

They claim they're being systematically targeted and murdered. The militias, jostling for control of Basra, consider them traitors. At least two have been killed this month.

Unlike the American government, which has announced plans to resettle 7,000 particularly vulnerable Iraqi refugees, the British government has made no such commitment.

The story is tragic, and well-told in this article by Jonathan Miller:

Thousands of local Iraqis got jobs with the British in Basra; drivers, cleaners, cooks, but interpreters were the brightest and best.

A lot of them are young graduates, trusting and full of hope for the future. Four years on, with Iraq - and their dreams -- turned upside down, many are now on the run, dumped by the very people they'd trusted and had wanted so much to help.

* * *

Michael Moran of the Council on Foreign Relations puts the question directly to Democratic presidential contender John Edwards: "You’ve laid out a fairly detailed timetable for how you’d like to see the drawdown take place in Iraq and the eventual withdrawal. There’s some skepticism about the ability of the United States to affect things in Iraq once we do withdraw, and the possibility of a genocide is something you’ve made reference to. So, how does that change your figuring on what the United States would have to do if you did get out and then this happened?"

Edwards answers by not answering at all:

First of all, the long-term stability and chance for success in Iraq is dependent on the Iraqi leadership itself. My view is that until and when we shift the responsibility for Iraq to the Sunni and Shia leadership, it's unlikely based on history that they're going to reach any political reconciliation. And so we need to do that in a smart, orderly way by telling them we’re doing it, withdrawing troops over a period of ten to twelve months. We ought to engage in every effort we can to help bring them together, to encourage political compromise, and we ought to engage the Iranians, the Syrians, and other countries in the region into helping stabilize Iraq. The Iranians clearly have an interest in a stable Iraq. They don’t want refugees coming across their border, they don’t want the economic instability, and they don’t want a broader Middle East conflict between Shia and Sunni. The Syrians have a similar interest, although they’re Sunni, not Shia.

And then, the president has a responsibility beyond that. We have interest in the region, that’s obvious, we need to maintain a presence there, in Kuwait, in Afghanistan, maybe in Jordan, depending on what we can agree to there, and we definitely need to maintain a naval presence in the Persian Gulf. And the president has got to prepare for the two things that you raise. One is the possibility that the civil war becomes all-out, so that it can be contained, and the second is the possibility of genocide. My view is that this is something that’s crucial for America to plan for. In the case of the civil war, there are strategies for dealing with it, to contain it—buffer zones, moving away from population centers. And in the case of genocide, this is something we clearly need to be doing with the international community, not America doing this alone. We have to prepare for that. I’m not going to say now this far in advance exactly what the mechanism should be, but America has to have a plan for that.

In a little under 400 words, Half are devoted to suggesting Iraq will be more stable without the U.S. there than with it there. When he gets around to the "what if you're wrong about that" alternative, his answer is "America has to have a plan for that," but clearly he hasn't got one of his own. So what good is he? He punts it to "the international community," which, in the language of Darfur and Rwanda, translates into "let them die."

No Friends Left Behind

[posted by Callimachus]

She belongs in America.

American Reporter Steven Vincent and his translator Nour Al Khal were putting their lives on the line each day in Iraq to uncover the truth about sectarian violence. In August 2005 they were kidnapped by the very people they had been reporting on. Vincent was shot dead, becoming the first U.S. journalist murdered in Iraq.

This week, NOW's Maria Hinojosa travels to the Middle East to talk to Nour, an extraordinary woman who, despite being shot three times, survived. Like two million of her compatriots, Nour has fled Iraq and still fears for her life as a refugee in a neighboring country.

Now Vincent's widow, Lisa Ramaci, is doing everything she can to bring Nour to safety in the U.S. "We share Steven. She was his friend. He was my husband. But we both loved him in different ways," Ramaci tells NOW.

But Ramaci is facing an uphill battle, as the U.S. denies the entry of thousands of Iraqis like Nour who helped Americans in Iraq. In fact, only 466 Iraqi refugees have been permitted into the U.S. since the war began in 2003. What's next for Nour and millions of other refugees who are overwhelming cities across the Middle East?

On Steven Vincent's killing here and a follow-up from Reader here and some sorry examples of the anti-war reaction to it here.

If we must come home now, let's not come home alone. If you think this theme is becoming tiresome here, you'd better find another blog to read.

Anti-war blogger Richard Warnick also is fighting the good fight on this one. This ought to be something that transcends everything but a solid sense of right and wrong, obligations, and whether America really intends to continue to be what it says on that statue in the harbor.

After Iraq: Kurdish Option

[posted by Callimachus]

Francis Fukuyama spells out where we stand in Iraq in looking forward, and it's as grim as I think it is:

The surge was the last military card we had to play, and now our bluff will soon be called.

... Let's not kid ourselves. The situation today is in some ways much worse than the one faced by President Nixon in Vietnam 35 years ago. At that time, South Vietnam had an army with a paper strength of 1 million men that, despite its problems, was able hold on for three years after the U.S. withdrew its ground forces. The South Vietnamese army provided Henry Kissinger with his "decent interval" between the U.S. withdrawal and South Vietnam's collapse. (Indeed, Kissinger argues with some plausibility that the South Vietnamese military could have hung on indefinitely if Congress hadn't cut off funds for U.S. air support.)

Nothing like that exists or will exist in Iraq for the politically meaningful future. As of November, the Pentagon claimed it had trained 322,000 Iraqi military and police, but it admitted that the actual number on hand was much lower because of desertions and attrition. Iraqi forces continue to suffer huge shortfalls in armor, weaponry, logistics and communications, and it is unclear how they would fare without American hand-holding.

I also agree with his premise that if we were committed to the work and willing to stick with it for the better part of a generation, Iraq could be the place we want it to be. Somehow, though, everyone on all sides of the matter in the U.S. got the notion that this was supposed to happen in 5 years or less.

Fukuyama's conclusion is something that Andrew Sullivan and the other neo-cons-turned-neo-realists will love: "An intensifying civil war will be a tragedy for Iraq, but it is not the worst outcome from a U.S. standpoint to have a number of bitterly anti-American groups duking it out among themselves." The use of "tragedy" here is an unconvincing elegy to cover the cynicism of the second clause of the sentence.

I'm not all that surprised when people who initially supported the war come around in those terms. In their initial decision to support the war they accepted tragic consequences that assuredly were to follow, for the sake of the good outcome that seemed certain to follow. What surprised me is when peace activists, in support of an immediate U.S. withdrawal, also start to adopt this tone and this callousness toward the certain deaths of innocents, since this was the ethical fire at the heart of their rage.

Here's one alternative that accepts the inevitable retreat without conceding failure of the vision. Pull back the core of U.S. troops into the Kurdish region, which already is effectively autonomous if not independent. It also has seized, as few other places have, the opportunities opened by the fall of Saddam and the presence of Americans willing to pitch in and help build a free, strong Iraq. It is, despite rough spots, a success story.

Establish bases there. Be a presence, but not an authority. Let the development that has begun to happen there continue to happen. Shelter it, but don't control it. And let it be a haven for the Iraqi Arabs of good will who have been our friends these past four years and who otherwise are doomed to die. The Kurdish economy is so strong it can absorb the refugees.

Let the Kurds work out their development, even when it means they will get mad at some U.S. policy and protest against us in the streets. Great! Let al-Jazeera and the rest show the footage of that.

My model is West Berlin: The city that won the Cold War. While the missiles sat in their silos and the tanks never fired a shot in anger, the impudent, fun-loving West Berliners sat in the middle of a sea of socialist gray and lived well. And people in the East noticed. Oh, how they noticed. Nobody in West Berlin wanted it this way, but they ended up in a house with glass walls and the socialist world gathered round. Their living rooms became the lit-up display windows for capitalism and popular freedom.

Kurdistan could be that. Over time, I am confident, the light of a prosperous and liberated Muslim nation governing itself, at peace with America and the West without losing its dignity or soul, will change the world the way some of us hoped the mere overthrow of Saddam would. The war was the bid to change things on the fast track. It didn't work (some would say it never seriously was tried). Now try it the slow way.

Downsides? Kurdistan is landlocked, and surrounded by suspicious neighbors. So was West Berlin. But Kurdistan's prosperity depends in part on access to markets for its products, particularly that black sticky stuff that comes out of the ground. The pipeline through Turkey will be essential, and Turkish sensibilities will have to be respected.

After Iraq (cont'd)

[posted by Callimachus]

In reference to this, fellow Council member Laer weighs in with a couple of excellent specific suggestions:

Why doesn't the GOP begin introducing "fall of Iraq" bills that force the Dems to confront (or publicly ignore or repute) the reality that will follow their "plan" for Iraq? Why isn't the military working with ICE now to pre-screen and pre-approve those Iraqis who may need instant processing if we really do abandon Iraq?

Also, while I realize emotion is not argument, think about this all in terms of Michael Yon's latest photo-essay.

After Iraq

[posted by Callimachus]

The phony Congress-White House showdown over military funding will turn out predictably, with political leaders claiming victory and anyone else thoroughly disgusted. But it seems clear now that we don't have the will to continue this war. Whatever the good, hard work being accomplished by our people in the country, there's nothing left here at home but the egos. Whatever the hopes and prospects once were for helping Iraq up on its feet as a strong and functioning democracy, we have broadcast to the world that we are not going to stick around long enough to do it. And no one else wants the job.

The people who ought to have supported and promoted this effort failed. That would include me. The people who worked from the beginning to defeat it won. And they seem to have convinced themselves they have no idea of the hell about to be unleashed.

There's great cred these days in having been "right" about Iraq in 2002, so that, like Woodstock, the number of people who claim to have "been there" on that issue is many times the number who actually were. So let me prepare to be in the next set of "right about Iraq." When we leave, there's going to be a massacre of innocents of medieval proportions and an infusion of life in al Qaida type jihadists that will keep us back on our heels for years.

I see the posters and stickers at the rallies. They're jarringly unreal. "Stop the war?" The real war begins after we leave. "Too many dead?" U.S. casualties over four years amount to a bad afternoon in 1944. The real threat begins after the enemy knows he's chased us out. No port, no off-base tavern, will be safe. "Deaths of innocents?" You've seen nothing yet.

They seem to think, on some unexpressed level, that the American failure they proclaim and support will simply re-set the clock to 2002.

In the limits of my experience, for most of the anti-war crowd this war always has been principally a domestic political issue. Concepts of national sovereignty, international rule of law, anti-imperialism served them as argument window dressing, but not consistently or sincerely (and in fact often in blatant contradiction to other stated goals of such people).

All that seemed to matter in the recent Democratic debates is having been quickest to bail out on the war and having given the most stylin' sack-cloth and ashes speech about it. I've not heard, "Instead of overthrowing Saddam, what would you have done about Iraq?" seriously asked or answered. Not even, "What would you have done differently in the war you voted to begin, and how would it have effected a different outcome." Not even, "What would you have said as CinC to the inevitable anti-war movement and its media-driven rage, even as you effected your winning strategy?"

Once the last U.S. National Guard private has boarded the last flight out of Iraq, as I read these anti-war folks, America will enter a period of national self-mortification, humbled and humiliated, doing penance before a wiser world. They actually seem to think this is a good thing and anticipate it with some pleasure. Remember that "We're Sorry" Web site that popped up after the 2004 election? Like that, but on a global scale, with our new leaders in place of the average sad sacks who posted up their pictures. Expect the next American U.N. ambassador to stand up and deliver a lengthy and formal apology to that august body.

And, as I think a great many people now perceive it, even after the war ends it will continue to function as a domestic issue chiefly: A cage to contain the new leaders' rivals. The memory of it will be like a family story that can be retold at any convenient moment to embarrass and check old stupid dad. "Remember that time you thought it would be a good idea to liberate Iraq? Oh, yes you do. Don't listen to anything he says; he's a fool."

A lot of the one-time rah-rah war supporters are now sullenly silent. [Those who haven't switched sides without changing anything and have become rah-rah war opponents.] They are getting used to the idea of spending the next 20 years in a political -- if not a literal -- cage.

But there's still work that needs to be done, and there's no one but us to try to do it. Prepare for the catastrophe that will come with the defeat our anti-war leaders have invited into the house. Prepare for the new, ugly global realities that these people seem not to realize we'll face, instead of the pacifist utopia they dream.

I can think of many rear-guard fights that must be fought, and future calamities that ought to be anticipated. I know which one I intend to concentrate on: Let's try not to leave our friends behind to burn in the furnace of the enemy's victory celebration. This is where I'm going to choose to devote my energies as the expedition to liberate Iraq implodes. I may write about it here; I may not. Blogging is only one tactic and it might not be the best one.

The last remaining neo-cons must rouse themselves out of the funk of failure and take responsibility for what they own, and for what no one else will do. The Iraqis who took our offer to help them build a better future -- they are our responsibility. Everyone else wants to walk away from them, forget about them, let them disappear into the night of the long knives. They are inconvenient facts about to be ground like hamburger in the anti-imperialist narrative, which will be the story indoctrinated into our children about this war, as it was for me about Vietnam.

The Iraqis who shared our vision of their nation are about to be killed, with their families, and then forgotten. We know this, if no one else does. We care, if no one else does.

Let's work to get them out alive. Even if nobody ever gets credit for it, even if it does nothing to stave off the coming American grovel and the resultant repercussions for what's left that calls itself "the West." Even if it boosts the fortunes of our domestic political rivals by allowing them to have a relatively bloodless victory. Forget them; they will make their own hell. Do what is right. Do what you're responsible for doing.

I am thinking of the Iraqi interpreters who helped us. And the political leaders of secular or minority parties. And the Iraqi women who stood up for their rights. And the communists (I never said you were going to like all these people). The writers, the intellectuals, the doctors. Employees who worked for the allied agencies or contracted companies, down to the last secretary in the pool.

Get them out, with their families. Settle them here, or in some other safe place of their choosing. Australia, perhaps, or Kurdistan. Give them the freedom and security elsewhere that we promised them, and failed to give them, in their homes.

The administration hitherto has been reluctant to open the national doors to Iraqi refugees. That's been understandable. As long as the White House was committed to succeeding in Iraq -- or at least to giving off the public impression of such commitment -- enabling the best and most useful citizens of Iraq to flee the country would have been counter-productive both politically and practically.

That time has passed. And so it's time to change the policy. And it's up to us to start pushing for it. Write to your congressman, and to people in power likely to have the skill and will to effect such changes. And keep writing. Keep calling. Keep up the pressure. Let's get some bills started. If that fails, set up private funds. Work with the people you know in the military, who will know best who over there needs a ride out. Find any allies and work with them; even if they're the loathsome types who likely will hold power here in a few years.

There is some practical virtue, after all, even in neo-isolationist realpolitik or sap-headed transnationalism, of being true to your friends.

You Would Weep

[posted by Callimachus]

A little more than 200 years ago, a bombastic U.S. agent named William Eaton (today he would be special op) led a handful of U.S. Marines, several hundred foreign mercenaries scraped from the taverns and brothels of Alexandria, and a pack of hired bedouins in a march across a desert that hadn't been crossed in force since classical times. They captured Tripoli's second largest city, then defended it against counter-attack and won a tremendous victory.

The tyrant of Tripoli had captured a U.S. warship and enslaved its 300 sailors. When they died in captivity, the Bashaw Yussef threw their bodies to the dogs in the street. The Jefferson administration wanted them free. America in those days had not entirely forgotten what "honor" meant.

The White House approved Eaton's mission, but didn't expect it to succeed. Until then, the only thing the Marines had going for them was a Washington, D.C., marching band which the citizens loved but the violin-playing Jefferson despised. Instead, he trusted the wily diplomats, who played the game the European way. Headlines in the administration mouthpiece newspaper blared "Millions for Defense but not a Cent for Tribute," but secretly Jefferson authorized ransom for the sailors.

So with a rival for the Tripoli throne, Hamet Bashaw, in tow, Eaton and his rag-tag army surprised everyone, Jefferson included, and conquered the city of Derne. It provided a line for the Marine song every boy used to know:

From the halls of Montezuma
To the shores of Tripoli
We will fight our country's battles
on the land as on the sea.
First to fight for right and freedom ...

And so on. It also provided the curved Memeluke sword on the Marine dress uniform that still commemorates what was, no matter what else, a glorious and honorable victory.

But the Marines' victory, when it came, was almost an embarrassment to the administration, since the diplomats were working things out smoothly with the tyrant, agreeing in principle, haggling over prices. They made sure Eaton and his followers never had a chance. The administration not only paid ransom, it accepted a treaty with a clause that set a going ransom rate for U.S. prisoners, thus encouraging the pirates to try to take more of them.

Worst of all, it sold out every honest ally the U.S. had in Libya. All the North Africans and Bedouins who had cast their lot with the Americans, all the residents of Derne who had helped the Americans defend it, the Arab women who had slipped between the lines and warned Eaton of their enemies' plots and plans, were left to their fate. Everyone knew the town would be looted and the inhabitants massacred when the Americans left. Eaton wrote from Derne to a friend describing his feelings when he read the diplomatic order to withdraw the American forces and the details of the deal that had been cut:

You would weep, Sir, were you on the spot, to witness the unfounded confidence placed in the American character here, and to reflect that this confidence must shortly sink into contempt and immortal hatred; ... but if no further aid comes to our assistance and we are compelled to leave the place under its actual circumstances, humanity itself must weep: The whole city of Derne, together with numerous families of Arabs who attached themselves to Hamet Bashaw and who resisted Yussef's troops in expectation of succour from us, must be abandoned to their fate -- havoc & slaughter will be the inevitable consequence -- not a soul of them can escape the savage vengeance of the enemy.

When the Associated Press opens a "news" story with the clause, "In a somber, pre-election review of a long and brutal war ..." you know we're going to drop it, we're going to "leave the place under its actual circumstances." You know there's no power of influence in Bush's White House that can cut past that, even if he decided now, too late, it was worth really trying.

Thanks to a pusillanimous political class, an attention-deficit public, an inept administration, and a malice-blinded media, we are going to leave.

The good people of Iraq will have to stand and face the bad people of Iraq and many other lands, on their own. It always was going to have to be them who won this war, not us. We went to Iraq to lose, to be told to go home. It was the only way to make the place what we wanted it to be: A strong, free, prosperous, and law-abiding country ruled transparently by its people. The question was, whether we would stay long enough to help build that country and receive its orders to depart, or whether it would be jihadis and thugs -- sorry, "insurgents" -- who would force us to leave too soon.

That answer is becoming clear. There will be consequences. The Kurds will feel them. But so will we. Weakness displayed before a weaker enemy is an invitation to further disaster. Just read Bin Laden.