IMPORTANT: Time to do the right thing by our Iraqi friends

That’s a good initiative, but we should ask ourselves and our politicians what can be done that the hundreds of thousands civilians who didn’t happen to work for the UK and are in equally great danger don’t suffer the same fate.

Well said, Daniel.

The same should go for the Iraqis who worked with other Coalition countries, of course. My primary concern is Australia, because I live there. What is the policy of the Australian government on this matter?

Noting that sk is a sockpuppet/new pseudonym for rightwing troll “Steve”, I’m forced to the conclusion that #5 is meant to be taken seriously.

Comment deleted by DD. I am really not bloody pleased at the level of narcissism and silliness in this comments thread.

Incidentally, there is, I think, a caveat, which is that some people who will have worked for the government may be suspected of having committed criminal acts in Iraq. This complicates the picture, does it not? It’s hard to argue that people against whom there is genuine evidence should be protected from justice and it might be profitable to discuss how that should be addressed.

It’s a humanitarian catastrophe there, a million dead, several million refugees and internally displaced. I see absolutely no reason why the collaborators who helped bring it all about should be able to jump the queue.

Certainly seems like the right thing to do.

But it also brings to mind the phrase, “Not enough lifeboats.”

NB – I’ve just contacted my MP about this, and I’ve stressed that what these people need is not ‘indefinite leave’ but legal refugee status, something which the British government has been very cagey about giving out over the last few years. The former implies that they are here on suffrance: the latter applies they have a right to stay, which is what HMG owes them.

Abb1 – we’ve all got to make a living, and when the economy tanks, the rations dry up, and the only employers in town hiring are a selection of groups of armed men, you don’t have to be an imperialist (or a fascist, or an Islamist) to sign up with one or the other of them. The point is to change the system, not blame its pawns.

The chances of crimes having been committed by them are very small.

That’s so, except that if they have carried out these tasks in order to facilitate the operations of an occupying army which – if the situation were that Britain were occupied – I think we would find unacceptable. That said, of course the penalties being inflicted are out of all proportion to the offence and it would be among the responsibilities of the occupiers to preserve their employees from reprisals.

I do suspect though that those who will be best protected will be those who have committed crimes.

Incidentally, there is, I think, a caveat, which is that some people who will have worked for the government may be suspected of having committed criminal acts in Iraq. This complicates the picture, does it not? It’s hard to argue that people against whom there is genuine evidence should be protected from justice and it might be profitable to discuss how that should be addressed.

I am pretty sure this can be addressed through the normal extradition and criminal procedures though – certainly not asking for any blanket amnesties. Even in actual war crimes trials, it’s pretty much established that justice is best served by proper trials and sentencing, not leaving people to the mercy of death squads.

I am pretty sure this can be addressed through the normal extradition and criminal procedures though

One would hope so because we do not want a situation obtaining such as obtains between the US and Havana, where the States harbours all sorts of people up to their necks in crimninal violence against Cuba.

Resources are limited

That strikes me as being the very argument most likely to be advanced by people wishing the government to wash their hands of this.

[Don’t call people “scum” – DD]

Because the government owes a special responsibility to people who it has placed in a particular position. That’s the point you’re trying hard not to see, abb1. You’re so busy thinking that people who (in your view) have collaborated might get away with it that you’re comnpletely missing that their boss will otherwise get away with it.

[deleted reference to deleted post – there was actually some other content in this post but I am by now in too bad a mood to care. Leave a bloody email address! – DD]

The Green Party is investigating raising a motion in the House of Commons.

FYI

some people who will have worked for the government may be suspected of having committed criminal acts in Iraq.

Honorable criminals don’t betray their accomplices. Most of our ideals were thrown overboard in service of the War–can we at least be honorable criminals?

[deleted reference to deleted post]

I think that I’ve been vindicated quite nicely [… no you weren’t -DD].

[deleted reference to deleted post, unobjectionable in itself but makes no sense without quoted material – DD]

So both the intent and effect of a campaign like this is to increase the number of Iraqis able to leave.

If the intent is to increase the number of Iraqis in general, it’s not at all obvious from the post with all that pompous language.

Even if it were the intent, the priorities are still completely screwed up here. Why don’t they instead campaign for getting pregnant women out or small children?

Yes, of course asylum should be granted to those Iraqis who worked directly with coalition troops should the need arise.

However, it seems plain to me that the responsibility does not end with those who were employed. Rather the U.K. (but the U.S. to a much far greater extent, obviously) is responsible for not packing up and leaving the country to impending genocide.

I thought this was appalling:

Obama says preventing genocide not good enough reason to stay in Iraq
http://www.startribune.com/587/story/1313874.html

The difference between Congo and Iraq is obvious — we already HAVE intervened in Iraq. If we’d intervened in the Congo, we’d also be obligated there, also, to ensure our departure was not going to result in genocide.

How can one seriously argue that we should take full responsibility for the relatively small numbers who worked directly for us (and yes we should) but no responsibility for the fates of the vastly larger numbers of Iraqis who must stay?

[deleted – DD. There was the germ of an argument here, but not nearly enough to save the post from a) general air of nastiness b) no email address again c) general policy of not giving benefit of doubt]

Surely one of the really serious difficulties here is that the US and UK governments will simply not accept that they’ve lost the war. Admitting that they are no longer able to protect those who work for them, and accepting the obligation to treat Iraqi’s allied with the coalition forces as ‘refugee’s’ would be tantamount to facing up to the reality on the ground, rather then the rhetoric at podium.

In that light these people are just part of the roll-call of victims created by the disasterous decision to go to war and the disasterous decision to continue along this bloody path rather then admit it was a mistake. For that reason supporters of the anti-war movement should have no problem in demanding that the government recognise the refugee crisis they themselves have created.

For what it’s worth: Denmark – yes, Denmark – after a prolonged public …erm… debate helped a group of Iraqi interpreters to get out of the country and to Denmark last week.

That the Danish FO originally managed to put them on the FO’s homepage with photos … well…

“Iraqi interpreters used by the British Army and CPA South have already been hunted down by death squads.”

If the British Army didn’t anticipate this, then they mustn’t have being paying attention while patrolling areas in N.Ireland with three-foot graffiti saying “Informers Will Be Shot”.

Kudos to Daniel for his campaign. I hope it succeeds.

You were at a bar, a pub, a tavern, a saloon. It became late, you had many drinks, you were less well-integrated than your usual, normal, workaday self. Something happened, there were screams, yelling, explosions, excitement, blows from out of the dark and confusion. You ended up on your knees, crawling across the floor while people went running by in all directions, some of them screaming in pain, some yelling in violent glee, some frighteningly purposeful and silent. In the midst of all that it occurs to your shocked and drunken self that you were, or at least had been, on a mission. Dimly grasped, the purpose of it eludes you entirely, but still, a mission. A light toward which you’d been moving. A purpose.
But obviously you’ve not succeeded, witness all the broken glass the wrecked furniture and laid-out victims, the police sirens and lights, and all those frantic people. Something happened. Explosions continue to take place. Back in there. Now someone has helped you get out of the building, which seems to be on fire in various levels and corners, windows keep shattering, things come flying down. Through it all cell phones ring, people murmur and shout into them, others call out prayers, or just pleas. Someone in an indistinct uniform helps you get back away from the heat as an object big as a motorcycle comes crashing down right where you’d been sitting. Someone else gets between you and a hate-filled shadow in the dark. Still another takes a blow to the chest that was aimed seemingly for you, though you feel innocent of all motive save survival – you want to go home, that’s all. But here you are.
Then things calm down, well no but you’ve gotten used to it, this new context where the steady rhythm of violence and violent noises is simply the background hum of where you are. You want to go home. You want it to be over. But here you are.
There are bodies all over the place, more by the second. People are dying, actually dying – and it comes to you that you did this, that taking responsibility for those still able to move, even just the ones who helped you, will mean taking responsibility for all of it, the wreckage, what this is now.
Priorities! Where’s your first allegiance? Your second?
Are you some corporation whose only focus is the bottom line? Is there guilt? Remorse? Is this a football game? Can you even think of talking about winning and losing now? Are you ready to take on the full weight of what’s happened and all its consequence?
If you’re going to “do the right thing”, shouldn’t you begin with the most innocent of your collateral victims? Or is this thug rules, where the hierarchy of loyalties begins with the most powerful and extends logically and inevitably down through the levels of power before it cuts off above the weakest and most readily discarded.
Whole families are being exploded into the next world still, now, actual children actual mothers actual fathers, because of what you’ve done and what you’re still doing just by continuing to stay there.
Yet now you seem to want to make sure your apprentices have some safe harbor. Not that it’s your first thought exactly, but that it’s pragmatic, doable, the inception of a new purpose – salvaging some aspect of honor out of the awful degradation.
It’s a worthwhile sentiment, but ethically it seems a little incomplete.

You owe more to the people who have helped you than to those who have not helped, and still less to those who have tried to hinder you.

People who disagree with Daniel either do not believe this, in which case they conteptible, or they regard Iraqis who have worked with the British Army as enemies precisely because they have worked with the British Army.

Presumably they opposed the war, and regard anyone who disagrees with them as evil and deserving of death.

This latter attitude reminds me of something…

Let me see if I get this straight: As citizens of states which have invaded another state, we are obligated to support the protection of citizens of the invaded state who turned against their own government in order to collaborate with our militaries? If the Iraqis in question did not support their own government, even to the very minimal extent of not aiding and abetting its enemies, what is the precise logic that argues that we must support our government in its prosecution of an invasion of a sovreign nation even if we consider that invasion immoral and illegal?

There seems to be one line of thought expressed here which argues that, since the people in question are certainly in harm’s way, we have a humanitarian responsibility to protect them, regardless of the fact that they have allied themselves with an invader which has practiced indiscriminate detention without trial, torture, rape-as-a-weapon-of-war, and the mass slaughter of civilians. I can’t see any reason why it should be that this set of people is more important and worthy of protection than any other at-risk group, unless we are operating under the assumption that the conflict which placed them in such a position was basically justified. If we don’t make that assumption, then surely we should be canvassing for the expatriation and support of a hundred other groups to an equal extent. But no one has yet advocated such a course of action.

Haven’t read the thread, but I suspect that the high-level Bush administration people actually hope that our Iraqi friends will be massacred, in order to the make stabbed-in-the-back idea more dramatic, and in order to justify the next war they promote.

I’m sure that the people on the ground feel the opposite, but they won’t be deciding the policy.

ad: You owe more to the people who have helped you than to those who have not helped, and still less to those who have tried to hinder you.

No argument there.

The question is whether ‘you’ happen to be a person for whom ‘helping’ equates with acting as enablers in an illegal and brutal occupation.

Minneapolitan, way to go, giving ad’s crazed rant plausibility after the fact. There is a very, very small sliver of the left composed of amoral monsters. I don’t run into them very often, so thank you for reminding me of its existence.

If people who collaborated with us committed crimes on our behalf, then they should be punished. For the rest, their only crime is being dumb enough to help us, or more likely, dumb enough to take a paycheck from us. For that, they don’t deserve the death that surely awaits them.

Walt, come off it: There is a very, very small sliver of the left composed of amoral monsters.

This is silly. Calling Minneapolitan’s reasoning “amoral” doesn’t even effectively get at what’s wrong with it.

The mortality rate for British employees is much, much higher. They are at much more risk. And it is our fault.

I’m sure the mortality rate for the former Baathists in the British occupied areas is even higher and it’s your fault too. And the former Baathists are guilty of exactly the same miscalculation – opportunistically siding with the most powerful warlord.

Something is left out in this argument, and it’s the patronizing feudal/colonial attitude that’s so apparent in this whole campaign. Americans are better at this, they won’t give a shit about ‘our bastards’.

Does anyone here think that those people being attacked with dogs, stacked naked and beaten to death in Abu Graib were interviewed without the help of interpreters? Got to Abu Graib without passing through the hands of some kind of interpreter? And these interpreters deserve a special campaign of their own?

I suppose, though, that when our nations have bastardised themselves as much as ours have, this is what it comes down to – public campaigns to save the principle of “honour amongst thieves.”

“And the former Baathists are guilty of exactly the same miscalculation – opportunistically siding with the most powerful warlord.”

I don’t know much about the people who actually were the translators. I really only know about a couple – “Salam Pax” who blogged at length for a year or so, then got out, and Mayada Salihi, referenced above at http://warhistorian.org/wordpress/?p=593

“opportunistically siding with the most powerful warlord.” doesn’t really describe their experience. Are there individuals you know of for whom it does?
Not everybody in Iraq working for “us” – hell, not every soldier, hell, not even every mercenary – is as evil as Cheney, as deserving of the piano-wire. Unless you know differently on an individual basis?

Is it a rule of Crooked Timber that abb1 will disagree with anything posted, no matter how nasty or preposterous that means his position will become?

If the ‘collaborators’, for want of a better word, were given refugees status more quickly wouldn’t that free up resources and benefit other assylum seekers?

67. If people who collaborated with us committed crimes on our behalf, then they should be punished.

This is another part of the argument that makes no sense to me. If the experience of Vietnam is any guide, there’s a good chance that some of the people who are extricated from Iraq will not be the harmless old charwomen and enthusiastic young workers from the Green Zone bazaar — they’ll be the worst of the worst, the people who were right their watching their countrymen being tortured. And we’re supposed to believe that the best way to ensure that these folx receive justice is to bring them to the US and Britain, where they’ll be under the protection of their accomplices? That’s like saying that the best way to protect the chicken coop is by letting any fox who enters it return to the nest of foxes, where he’ll surely get a fair trial.

What strikes me as morally monstrous in these times is any action which affirms the state’s monopoly on violence. I have protested this war — and suffered some minor consequences for it — while many of the folx here were havering about whether “the sanctions should be given time to work” or some such nonsense. Letting Iraqi collaborators butt in front of all other asylum seekers may assuage your guilty feelings about not speaking out more vociferously, but there’s nothing “moral” about it.

they’ll be the worst of the worst, the people who were right their [sic ] watching their countrymen being tortured

I am sure you’re right – but that’s no reason not to demand that it’s the other people who are extricated while the criminals should face justice. Is it?

seem to have the idea that US crimes are somehow different to the crimes of other invaders and mass-murderers

You sure that’s not an internet “seem”, i.e. one where people seem to have implied things that they have not said?

Let’s all take a moment to appreciate the most absurd Godwinism in the history of electronic communication:

74: 3. Is it not the case that the punishment of suspected collaborators in liberated France is now regarded by pretty much everybody as a thoroughly nasty and shameful episode, and is it likely to be any better in Iraq?

I don’t consider it too nasty or shameful, nor, I believe, do many of the victims of the Nazi war and genocide. To put it plainly: If you aid and support an occupying army that is carting off your friends and neighbors to be tortured and killed, then hanging’s too good for you. And how many people in western Europe were actually executed post-WWII? A tiny portion of those who likely deserved it, I’ll wager. The vast majority of the Nazis and their collaborators were peacefully and happily reintegrated into western European society, hence the R.A.F.’s campaign against them 30 years later.

If this argument was meant to convey that Iraqi collaborators are not as bad as French collaborators, you may have a point, but I think that would be a pretty tough sell to the folx who’ve lost loved ones through the craven actions of their erstwhile compatriots.

What is the difference between getting these people out and supporting refugee status for people who collaborated with the right wing juntas in latin America?

The people who collaborated with the right wing juntas in Latin America are in general facing the prospect of a fair trial and punishment, not murder by death squads. Any other damn fool questions (he asked with heavy heart, for he knew there were)?

86. The people who collaborated with the right wing juntas in Latin America are in general facing the prospect of a fair trial and punishment,

Do you have any proof for this huge and all encompassing assertion? As far as I have seen, the only people who are at any risk of being prosecuted are a few of the top military officers in a few of the affected countries. Many of the rightist terrorists from the 1970s have been, once again, happily and peacefully re-integrated into their societies, and many have already been amnestied. But I guess the handful of generals and secret police chiefs who might actually spend a few years in jail at some distant point are an adequate substitute for all of the peasants, workers and activists who were murdered under their orders, eh?

Saddam Hussein didn’t represent a legitimate government of Iraq? Boy, oh boy.

so dsquared, if those collaborators in latin america were facing the prospect of retributory death squads you would want to get them out? You know, support your Latin American friends? I presume they would need to take priority in your view over other refugees?

But as minneapolitan observed, you haven’t actually answered my “damn fool question.” I was asking about the low level collaborators, not the generals. The equivalent in latin America of the interpeters and drivers who are now facing retribution in Iraq. I don’t believe these people had or ever will get a trial, and I don’t think you do either.

ejh says

You sure that’s not an internet “seem”

since you posted that, dsquared suggested that Saddam Hussein was no more legitimate a government of Iraq than the US (under whose rulership 655,000 people and counting have died). So no, I don’t think it’s an internet “seem” at all.

Would the people in this thread trying to pretend that Saddam Hussein represented the legitimate government of Iraq and that the CPA and Iraqi government don’t (which is the only way that you can get to the conclusion that the Iraqis in question are “collaborators” or that the British troops are the “enemy”) please knock it off.

Uh… Okay. So when large percentages of Iraqis surveyed approve of attacks on British and/or American troops, we should simply take this as an extremely unorthodox demonstration of friendship and/or gratitude?

As to the legality of the present Iraqi government, what ejh said. Ignoring the massively flawed election process, there’s the unfortunate fact that the USUK essentially forced the replacement of the prime minister. How does that square up with even the loosest definition of legitimacy?

It seems to me that the present government is neither the author nor the enforcer of the law within its own territory, and that makes it hard to consider it legitimate. This is of course not the only objection to the description.

A lot of interesting arguments on both sides!

Seems there are a couple key questions here.

1. Morally, universal vs. particular. The notion that “we” (who we is is question 2) owe our Iraqi collaborators a special duty, regardless of the morality of the larger enterprise, has been denigrated here as “honor among thieves”. But that’s not quite right — it’s the same moral principle that says you owe a special duty to any benefactor or dependent. Which is worse, to harm someone who trusted you and helped you, or to harm a totally innocent bystander?

Roy Belmont at 57 above says the latter, at least if the harm occurred in the course of an immoral action. But I don’t think it’s so obvious. Duties do sometimes arise from relationships rather the intrinsic deservingness of the person owed the duty, no? Say at one pole you have a purely tribal morality, at the other you have Peter Singer-style utilitarianism. Most of our moral intuitions are somewhere between. And even if we think that the trend of history is from the former toward the latter, and see this as progress, it doesn’t exempt us from duties toward family and friends. Presumably we don’t totally reject the mindset that had Dante put traitors to benefactors in the very lowest circle of Hell.

2. Politically, the relationship of the citizen to the state. Suppose we accept that the US and UK would be doing something horribly wrong by abandoning Iraqis who assisted the occupation. What duty does that put on those of us who live in those countries, but opposed the war? Minneapolitan and others say, nothing. I agree this far, that the argument that abandoning the Iraqis will make it harder for the US to find collaborators for future occupations has no force if, like me, you think the less capacity the US has to occupy foreign countries, the better.

But sbk and others who say that by virtue of being a citizen of the US and UK, you have responsibility for those government’s actions — morally you must regard those governments as “us” — is more convincing. I think for the same reason we protested this war and not the atrocities committed by the governments of Sudan or Burma or wherever, we are also responsible for the actions of our governments and take on the corresponding duties toward our Iraqi collaborators.

Abb1, this is precisely the issue I was trying to get at in my first point. There is the moral question of which Iraqis are most deserving of asylum (based on innocence and immediate danger or whatever). There is a separate, but also legitimate question, of which Iraqis we owe the most immediate duty to.

Probably a lot of money, considering. And also probably some significant powers come with it: to settle old scores, for example, to protect some, to harass others.

Abb1, you are just making these fucking charges up out of thin air, and using them as a moral argument in favour of abandoning entire families to death squads. Screw your head back on.

Firstly, I think anyone trying hard to help anyone else, and especially and specifically in the context from which this plea emerged, deserves praise, financial assistance, and some good beer at the end of the day.
This – “…trying to pretend that Saddam Hussein represented the legitimate government…(which is the only way that you can get to the conclusion that the Iraqis in question are “collaborators”…”, however, no.
You can have more than one asshole in a fight, in fact they can all be wrong, bad, whatever; one being a certified asshole doesn’t get the other one off that particular hook.
Saddam – bad; U.S. (at least its semi-visible policy-shaping hands) – also bad.
Collaborators aren’t legitimated by the moral flaws of what got replaced by the thing they’re collaborating with.
Again, helping get your boys out is fine and good, not weak, not wrong – worth doing and quick.
It’s incomplete ethically though, I think, to a degree that coupled with the urgency of the moment makes that worth pointing out.
The images of families who were and are neither “insurgents” nor “collaborationnistes” yet are bombed and broken by the same force you’re urging responsibility on, or for, makes it a harder question for me.

This isn’t hard, people. You take them in, give them citizenship, and a relocation package, at the very least. If Arik bloody Sharon could see the plain moral obligation (in the wake of a withdrawal authored, managed and botched by his political foe, at that), does the UK dare do less?

(Former UK citizens in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the PRC should probably not reply, or at least not with traceable email addresses.)

I see this as “collaborators=snitches, scabs, stool-pigeons and bloodhounds” i.e. people betraying their friends and neighbors.

So like Abb1, you’re plucking charges out of thin air and then concluding that a death sentence without trial is appropriate? Be serious.

Abb1, I think you are a bit naive about the potential for a truly sound case-by-case assessment of appropriate asylum in a refugee crisis of the scale of one in Iraq. However, I think their is a very important plank to you position: getting the people out who worked with the coalition would only begin to capture the vast class of people who have been placed at grave risk by the war. That class may be the majority of the Iraqi population. Now, I don’t think that a refugee program that accommodates the majority of Iraqis is even remotely possible, but I have a crazy hope that there might be a very large program pulling hundreds of thousands out of the grinder over the next few years, like there was after the war in Vietnam. A successful campaign to remind the public and the coalition governments of the most basic obligations to refugees might be a way towards a more broad tolerance of such a large scale program. Whatever you might think of it, the point about looking after people who have worked with you, especially if that work has been at their increased risk, is a point that most people relate to instinctively and it might be a way to get people to think positively about refugees and break down their fear of Iraqis in general. And fear is surely the biggest obstacle to popular acceptance of a large scale refugee program.