Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
Senior administration officials say no airlift to Guam being considered for our Iraqi friends
Posted by Christopher Coen on October 24, 2011
A columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer writes that Senior Obama administration officials have told her that no airlift to Guam being considered for our Iraqi friends waiting on US special immigrant visas. Instead they say that there are top-level meetings dedicated to getting the SIV backlog cleared “within months” – and that efforts to clear the backlog will become more intense as the end of the year approaches. Trudy Rubin’s article is found in the Charlotte Observer:
In September 2007, Barack Obama made a stump speech berating the Bush team for breaking faith with Iraqis who had helped Americans.
“One tragic outcome of this war,” said Obama, “is that the Iraqis who stood with America – the interpreters, embassy workers, and subcontractors – are being targeted for assassination. … And yet our doors are shut.
“That is not how we treat our friends. That is not who we are as Americans.”
…In 2008, Congress passed legislation calling for 25,000 special immigrant visas, or SIVs, to be issued over a five-year period – to Iraqis whose lives were endangered because they’d worked for U.S. soldiers or civilians. The law’s criteria were so arduous that only about 3,600 have been issued; at least 1,500 are pending a decision.
What’s worse, the numbers have slowed to a trickle just as we’re departing. Only 10 SIVs were issued in August. The preliminary figure for September is 46. At that rate, it will be years before the backlog is cleared…
…Senior administration officials tell me of top-level meetings dedicated to getting the SIV backlog cleared – “within months.” I believe they are sincere, but the numbers aren’t moving.
Too many agencies are involved, and no senior White House official seems seized with this issue. (Where, I wonder, is the push from the National Security Council’s Samantha Power, who once wrote so eloquently on Iraqi refugees?)…
…There is one obvious way to clear the logjam: an airlift to remove our Iraqi friends from danger.
There is plenty of precedent for such an airlift. In 1975, after initially abandoning massive numbers of our South Vietnamese allies, Gerald Ford finally authorized a massive airlift to evacuate them to Guam and, eventually, to the United States.
In 1996, Bill Clinton ordered Operation Pacific Haven, which flew 6,000 Iraqi Kurds and other opposition activists from Iraqi Kurdestan to Guam, after Saddam Hussein’s troops invaded the region. If Obama ordered a similar airlift, security checks could also be conducted in Guam.
There are more recent precedents, too. The Poles, Danes, and Australians airlifted their Iraqi staff out of the country; after the massacre in Basra, the British returned and flew out endangered staff.
Are we less honorable than the Poles, Danes, Australians, and Brits? I’ll hold off on an answer. Yet, senior administration officials tell me no airlift is being considered…
…Administration officials also tell me that efforts to clear the backlog will become more intense as the end of the year approaches. But if those efforts fail, it may be too late to organize an airlift.
In 2007, Obama said we had a “moral obligation” to those Iraqis who helped us. History will judge him on how he honors that pledge. Read more here
