Here It Comes...

As if the cost of President Bush's disastrous misadventure in Iraq wasn't already high enough in terms of American lives and treasure, it now turns out that the cost for the U.S. will be even higher. After hearing the ridicious "we are fighting them over there, so we won't fight them over here" nonsense ad nauseam for the past three years, the Bush administration has decided that, we will be bringing them over here after all - at our own expense.

The United States could take in up to 25,000 Iraqi refugees this year -- more than three times the number it previously agreed to admit -- in an effort to provide some relief to the crisis affecting several Arab countries, the State Department said yesterday.

The department also said it plans to allow Iraqis and Afghans working for the U.S. government in their respective countries to immigrate to the United States after only three years of service instead of the current 15 required by law.

"It's fair to say that, if we get the referrals [from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees], we could resettle up to 25,000 Iraqi refugees within the president's determination this year," said Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration.

The Bush administration apparently believes that it is a good idea to bring 25,000 people whose lives the U.S. upended by invading their country - a country whose population is almost entirely Muslim - to settle in the U.S. This shouldn't be a surprise; after all, this the same administration who thought it was a good thing to invade Iraq in the first place, and an even better idea to invade Iraq with a fraction of the force need to properly occupy and rebuild it. Given the events of the past seven years, it is manifest lunacy to allow more Muslims to immigrate to any Western country, the U.S. in particular. While some of these immigrants might be grateful to America for rescuing them, many more may quietly harbor anger at the country whose staggering ineptitude destroyed their lives in Iraq. And, as Muslims, they will all be open to recruitment by Islamist radicals, many of whom may slip into the U.S. by posing as America-friendly Iraqi refugees. This is such a spectacularly bad idea that it could only have been agreed to by the Bush administration, which has given birth to so very many terrible policies already.

UNHCR estimates there are more than 4 million displaced Iraqis around the world, including 1.9 million inside Iraq and 2.25 million in neighboring countries, of which 1.2 million are in Syria, 750,000 in Jordan, 100,000 in Egypt and 200,000 in the Persian Gulf states. Only those who have left Iraq are formally considered refugees.

At the same conference, Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, announced Washington's plan to make it easier for Iraqis and Afghans working for the United States to move to the United States.

Hundreds of local employees, known as Foreign Service nationals, in Iraq and Afghanistan would be eligible to apply for immigrant visas, commonly referred to as green cards. U.S. officials said those people, many of whom have lost family members, deserve a reward for their sacrifice.

"We want to do right by people who have served well and honorably on behalf of their country and the United States, and we think that's important," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

He urged Congress to swiftly pass a bill the Bush administration is about to send to Capitol Hill concerning special immigrant visa (SIV) applications.

Mr. McCormack - like the administration he serves - is out of his mind. Permitting a mass immigration of Iraqis to the U.S. will likely be remembered as the greatest domestic security disaster since the FBI sat by idly while a dozen or so Saudis learned to fly (but not land) commercial airplanes back in 2000.

Americans need to contact their Senators and Representatives and block this asinine proposal before the influx begins. The U.S. clearly does owe Iraqis displaced by the war some form of compensation, but resettlement in the U.S. is not an option.

That the Bush administration would even contemplate this reveals two things: First, that it has no respect for the American people (who would never support such a measure) or the concept of American cultural or territorial integrity. Of course, this administration has been showing its disregard for these things consistently over the past six years, so it should come as no surprise. Second, the admission of refugees represents a tacit admission by the administration of the horrendous failure of the whole Iraqi enterprise, and its quiet recognition that Iraq isn't going to get any better, but only worse.

At least we now know that George Bush plans to punish Americans for no longer backing his failed war by dumping tens of thousands of potentially hostile Muslims inside the U.S. Just as he has allowed millions of Latin Americans to invade the U.S., bankrupting state and local governments, and dilluting the culture that it took Americans two centuries to build. The consquences of this - if permitted - will reverberate for decades.