"The Other Surge"

Mark Krikorian at The Corner offers an unhappy glimpse of our potential future:

Since it seems fairly certain to me now that we're going to end up evacuating Baghdad's green zone from the embassy roof in helicopters, what I'm worried about is the much more significant "surge" we're going to have to deal with — Iraqi refugees, virtually all of them our Sunni enemies, being resettled by the hundreds of thousands in the United States. [. . .] Which is why in the future we need to factor in considerations of the immigration fallout before we launch foreign policy initiatives. For instance, the immigration created by our absurd intervention in Somalia has resulted in Somali cabbies at the Minneapolis Airport trying to impose Islamic strictures on travelers there [. . .] — no one could have predicted that specific outcome, but something like it was bound to happen, and is a cost of involvement in the Islamic world. In the words of CAIR: "Now that the Muslims are here, they need to be accommodated." [Emphasis added.]

If the surge fails and General Petraeus does not turn out to be Bush's U.S. Grant, the only difference between the parties come the 2008 election is how, not whether, to pull the plug on Iraq. In such circumstances, the immigration question Krikorian notes above may be the election's key issue, and one which could divide the parties internally. It will, however, play out on a political landscape where American sympathy will likely be tapped, and the spectacle of killings and families being torn asunder that will unfold on CNN will be greeted with hard American hearts.

Democrats may want to run like hell from Iraq, but if there's anything to their oft-professed, evolved sense of human concern, I would be surprised if many of them could watch as Iraqis were butchered by the bushel, even if they were Sunni. Besides, they had fantasized so much about Vietnam since the 2003 invasion, what better way to cap off another American defeat than with a massive evacuation of refugees. The evacuation would probably play out so poorly a decade later the nation would endure an Arab version of "Miss Saigon" on Broadway.

On the other hand, I doubt saving people that squandered their liberation because their god and culture preferred tribal savagery is going to play very well in the heartland. Would the present Democrat party, so recently returned to power, want to gamble its position to bring them here? A clash between the nutroots and the Democrat establishment could make for an ugly primary, with hurt feelings spilling over into the general election.

For Republicans, their divisions on this may be less pronounced. A lot of conservatives will remember that the war was sold in large part on the basis that Arabs were capable of democracy. If Iraq fails, thus proving the opposite, they will see no reason to bring Iraqis here to make a mess of our democracy. Moreover, they will reason, why bring more of America's enemies here? The war was lost largely thanks to the native ones we already had.

This view will be challenged by a minority of conservatives that believe in an old-school sense of national honor. We went there to help, we can't just abandon them, they will say. Moreover, who would ever side with us again knowing we may abandon them? The national mood being such that we will be basically raising the drawbridge and forsaking any more military adventures until a nuke goes off in Manhattan, this minority view will be ignored, and the GOP nominee will run on a hard no-refugee policy.

Posted by JakeM at January 12, 2007 02:56 PM | TrackBack