The George W. Bush refugees
‘‘If you break it, you own it.” Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn
Rule, warning George W. Bush of the consequences of invading Iraq,
turned out to be dead wrong.
Make that half wrong. Bush broke it — “it” being a swath of the
greater Middle East. But the U.S. adamantly refuses to accept anything
like ownership of the consequences stemming from Bush’s recklessly
misguided act.
Not least among those consequences is the crisis that finds refugees
fleeing Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the Islamic world in
search of asylum in the West. The European nations most directly
affected have greeted this wave with more hostility than hospitality —
Germany, for a time, at least offering a notable exception.
For its part, the U.S. has responded with pronounced indifference. In
a gesture of undisguised tokenism, the Obama administration has
announced it will admit a grand total of 10,000 Syrians — one-eightieth
the number that Germany has agreed to accept this year alone.
South Oil Company employee looks on as smoke rises following a pipeline
explosion south of Basra in al Faw, Iraq, in March 2004 | EPA/SHAWN
BALDWIN
