What We Owe Iraq

With the Petraeus/Crocker report presented to Congress and the White House selling yet another set of measures for success in Iraq, the American people have a responsibility to weigh what they owe the Iraqi people. Whether we have the capacity to rescue Iraq, militarily or otherwise, from a downward spiral of civil war, we have some basic duties to the Iraqi people and to others in the region that we must not evade. It was the United States, after all, that launched the preventive war of choice that stirred up a whirlwind of violence in that country.

These are duties to refugees and displaced people above all, especially those who aided the U.S. effort, but to others as well, including Iraqi Christians, who have had to flee the violence in their homeland. In the years ahead, we must support and resettle them in cooperation with countries of first asylum like Syria and Jordan and organizations like the This article appears in September 24 2007.