Idiot of the Week
In a recent House hearing on the status of American efforts to assist the millions of Iraqis displaced by the war, Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher spit out some lines that deserve some ridicule.
Arguing that things are so safe in Iraq these days that there's nothing more for these refugees and displaced people to be afraid of, Rohrabacher said, "It is not the job of the people of the United States to subsidize the existence and living standards of refugees in Jordan or anywhere else if they have the option of going home."
The problem is, for many of the hundreds of thousands of refugees stuck Jordan, Syria, Turkey, and Egypt, going home isn't an option. Part of the reason that violence in Iraq is down is that many neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed, with one group being pushed out almost completely, and their houses taken over by people of the rival sect. Simply put, many of these refugees have no place to go home to.
Rohrabacher isn't much better when it comes to the matter of Iraqi terps, either. The United States has alloted 500 visa slots for translators who have worked for U.S. government or military units--a number which has already been reached for 2008. While the president signed a bill to increase that number to 5,000, according to the Washington Post, "it may be months before guidelines are drafted" to actually get the law on the books.
And in the meantime, Rohrabacher thinks they'll do just fine where they are. "They're wonderful people who'd like to live here, especially the ones who have helped us, but the last thing we want to do is to have people who are friendly to democracy . . . moving here in large numbers at a time when they're needed to build a new, thriving Iraq." While many of these wonderful people would no doubt like to stay in Iraq, what they do for a living--work for the Americans--make them targets for insurgents. They're considered collaborators by those Iraqis who haven't yet decided to stop the killing, which means that no matter how much they might want democracy in their country, if they stay, they won't live to see it.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 03/17/2008 - News and Personal dispatches from the front lines.
http://thunderrun.blogspot.com/2008/03/from-front-03172008.html
Posted by: David M | March 17, 2008 at 02:08 PM