Opinion: Seattle Times-Intelligencer Editorial Board and Reuters Columnist speak out on crisis

A couple of recent opinion pieces have caught our eye as being particularly worth a read:

The editorial board of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes:

It's quite something to see how short a government can fall even when the standards it fails to meet are its own tragically low ones…

So, the sky is the limit for funding the bombing of Iraq and carpeting it with mercenary contractors (a nearly $600 billion Defense budget sounds obscene), but when it comes to helping Iraqis, the funds dry up. Could it be that admitting so many Iraqi refugees here would equal an admission that things aren't going well in Iraq?

Reuters columnist Bernd Debusmann writes in an opinion piece:

Does the U.S. have a moral obligation to help because it started the war that uncorked ethnic violence? Yes, say senior State Department officials, particularly for those Iraqis who worked with Americans and put their lives at risk. But President George W. Bush has stayed silent on the issue and ignored appeals to show leadership in dealing with the world's largest displaced population, after Darfur.

Opinion: The Disgrace at State

This powerful blog piece by George Packer of The New Yorker is an absolute must-read. In it, he describes a State Department that attempts to obstruct Iraqi refugee legislation, makes promises it has no way of keeping to our Iraqi allies and falls short on promises already made. Perhaps most remarkably, he finds that military and State Department personnel who wish to act responsibly on this issue must turn to the press for help:

"...a desperate department official wrote to me, describing the sluggishness with which refugee applications in Syria and Jordan are being reviewed:

There is no excuse for this kind of mindless bureaucratic approach. I can’t find anyone here who seems to care that some of them seem to be on the verge of abandoning their cases. Know anyone who could do a one-page article somewhere to get the ball moving again?

So conscientious people on the inside have nowhere to turn but the press."

Read the full article on Huffington Post, or Mr. Packer's New Yorker Blog.

Commentary calls for international action on refugees

In The Guardian today, James Denselow discusses how options are narrowing for Iraqi refugees as Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and others close their borders, and calls on the West to do something before the situation reaches disastrous proportions:

Indeed, with the Saudis building the world's most hi-tech fence and joining the Kuwaitis and the Jordanians in attempting to hermetically seal their border, the ways out for Iraqis are narrowing by the day. What's more the imminent Turkish incursion into northern Iraq may trigger a new wave of refugees that may find themselves running into cul-de sacs of no-go areas, literally unable to seek refuge. The nature of the heavy weaponry that Turkey is preparing on its border with Iraq, including armour and artillery, could reveal the gilded statue that is the Kurdish regional government (KRG), as being based on a bed of political quicksand, and the relative security of the north of the country could become a thing of the past...

Instead of waiting for such an inevitable tragedy to occur, steps must be taken now to reinforce the UNHCR and affiliated bodies with financial and political capital. This will take pressure off the neighbouring host countries and make clear that the refugee issue is separate from the myriad of political disputes that are currently in lay. Continued inaction sees the walls of the Iraqi labyrinth shift ever closer on those most vulnerable and that must not be allowed to happen.

Read the rest here.