Another pathetic story
The Iraq story gets worse and worse. The New York Times reports tonight that the Bush Administration is allowing only a tiny handful of Iraqi refugees into the United States. Those excluded include some of the Iraqis who worked for the U.S. Army or the occupation government and who have been targeted for death by one of the factions in the civil war now raging in the country.
This comes a few days after we learned that the late President Gerald Ford counted among his greatest regrets that he couldn't keep the evacuation of South Vietnamese loyalists going for even a week longer so more of them could escape to the U.S. He kept the helicopters flying between Saigon and aircraft carriers offshore until the last possible moment, when the North Vietnamese were closing in on the American embassy. And to go back deeper in our history, although following a victory rather than a defeat, President Truman opened the gates of America to large groups of European refugees after World War II.
Let's be honest about why this is happening. The rightwing Republican pogrom against illegal immigrants, which has only a hazy line of distinction in their minds from legal immigration, is to blame here. The White House has no desire to be "for" immigration by non-whites of any persuasion, save those who are wealthy. For the Bush Administration to blame the U.N. for the delays is the height of chutzpah, given that Bush and his people typically put as much distance between themselves and the U.N. as possible.
Just hope and pray that America never experiences blowback over what Bush has done in Iraq.