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How to avoid the refugee problem that results from (necessary) U.S. interventions in other countries
Regarding the Sunni-Shi’ite civil war in Iraq, a reader writes:
This is why some of us where against invading Iraq in the first place. Why do we have to involve ourselves with these people? And yes, if (when) we start withdrawing, they will be brought to this country in huge numbers.The reader and I have often talked about this issue. To his credit he had posted warnings on the likelihood of Iraqi refugees before the invasion of Iraq. The problem comes down to this: once we understand that any government that we help set up in some Muslim or other foreign country is not likely to succeed in the long-term, there is an ineluctable logic leading to a massive refugee flow from that country into America, as the people who supported our efforts and worked for the new (and now fallen) regime will be in danger of their lives, much as the pro-French Algerians were. It seems to me that the only way to avoid a flood of refugees would be to have the equivalent of a pre-nuptial agreement. Before America invades and attempts to reconstruct some foreign country, there must be a formal agreement among the president, the Congress, and both parties that if our occupation of the country that we’re about to invade and reconstruct fails and our enemies gain power, the people of that country who sided with our occupation will not be coming to America. We must also line up, in advance, some other country, culturally similar to their own, to which they can go if they must leave their own country. If such a “pre-bellum” agreement is not possible, then that absolutely puts the kabosh on any U.S. intervention in that country beyond the overthrow of the existing regime. No reconstruction, no nation-building, no democratization, no building of schools and fixing of water lines, no nada.
Which, by the way, happens to be VFR’s preferred approach to intervention in any case. Email entry |