Ahmadinejad's BFF: Bush the 2nd

Reaction to an Andres Martinez WaPo column about the candidates' Iraq solutions:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/stumped/2008/04/
the_democrats_iraq_dilemma.html

Let me add a few items I haven't noticed in Martinez' column or in other comments.

1. Did you know that Iraq had around a million Christians before our invasion? Many came from families that had been there for thousands of years. Most were middle class. Now the men have been mostly murdered by both Shiite and Sunni militias and the women and children driven into exile in Syria and Jordan, where they have no future.

This makes GOPers like Bush and Martinez the worst enemies of Christians on Earth today. Pretty ironic, huh?

2. Did you know that most of Iraq's middle class--Sunni, Shiite and Christian (and Turkomen and several other smaller groups) have also been driven out of Iraq and are refugees in Jordan and Syria? They're been driven out because the Islamofascists hate anyone with education (remember, Pol Pot's fanatics murdered Cambodia's middle class en masse as their first order of business).
The middle class has also been targeted by robbers and kidnappers.

3. Did you know that the Bush administration has told all the translators and other Iraqis who have worked for us "You're on you're own, pal." --even though all have been marked for death by the militias (Shiite and Sunni), along with their families.

Regardless of how well the war goes in Iraq, the Republican leadership has transformed that country permanently from a secular dictatorship into a quasidemocratic Islamist state that won't be safe for Christians and "collaborators" ever again, and not for its doctors and professors and other middle class people for many, many years.

Democrats and Republicans alike should recognize our moral responsibility to these 2-3 million Iraqis. If we took them in that would match two or three years' illegal immigration from Mexico and parts south--which we could staunch if we actually enforced existing laws on employers of illegals and enforced our borders.

Then instead of getting semiliterate peasants we'd get an educated workforce vastly more able to contribute to America and not just consuming social services while lining bosses' pockets.

We'd also get some Al Qaeda sleeper agents, probably. But no solution's perfect. And we'd at least do the honorable thing. Like the GOP keeps saying we should do, only they don't mention dealing with Iraq's refugee problem. That would be...well inconvenient. Next time some GOPer starts talking at you about Honor and Iraq--ask him what he proposes to do about the refugee crisis we created. Then you'll know whether he's actually honorable or just funnin' ya.

Even apart from the refugee issue--we all, Democrats and Republicans alike--have to face one fact: there is no simple, satisfactory solution in Iraq. To quote an old punk rock song:

Should we stay or should we go?
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da
Should we stay or should we go?
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da
If we go there will be trouble...
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da
If we stay there will double...
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da
All I really wanna know:
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da
Should we stay or should we go?

At every crossroads our Republican administration made the one choice that would make it as hard for us as possible in the future--and help Iran as much as possible in the present.

First we took out the major check to Iranian power. Then we ensured that it would have the same relationship to Iran that Lebanon has to Syria. Then we tied up all our military resources in Iraq (with a tad left over for the country that the attack on America actually came from), so if Iraq actually does something we couldn't do anything but drop bombs on them.

Wouldn't it be funny if it turned out Bush were actually an Iranian mole?