National Honor and Our Iraqi Friends

It is a somewhat quaint notion. National honor. Nations once went to war for it. Today, we are a little embarrassed to even mention it. Honor can certainly be abused; consider the collective blood-letting of World War I, where the flower of European youth was slaughtered for purposeless nationalism in the name of national honor.

Yet, without some sense of national honor, an ugly and calculating notion of national interest can only make our nation’s long-term position less secure, not least by the reduction of its moral authority. Consider America’s shoddy 20th Century record of national honor. We abandoned Cuban exiles on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs. Our CIA encouraged various resistance movements in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, only to stand by as Soviet tanks rolled through Budapest and Prague. We withheld air support from the Vietnamese in 1975 and stood by as Saddam’s helicopters attacked Shia rebels in Southern Iraq in the denouement following the first Gulf War.

We’re told that now we must stay in Iraq as a matter of national honor, a commitment to those whom we have encouraged to stand up against violent movements. The analogy is imperfect in this case. Those we have supported–the Shia and the Kurds–are not endangered by a US withdrawal. Rather, the Sunnis, the clan of Saddam, are endangered. But they’re not alone. Sadr and his thugs have little regard for the Shias who have worked with the US occupation forces as translators and otherwise, nor do they respect religious minorities that were relatively safe in Saddam’s secular despotism.

While I bow down to no one in my opposition to open borders, I would make a specific exception to protect those who have worked directly for US forces in Iraq. It is the only honorable thing for our nation to do. One aspect of individual and collective honor is the willingness to accept a certain amount of discomfort and danger in matters of principle. Allowing this smallish number of refugees into the US would be one small way to make up for our previous errors. It is certainly not the case that everyone inconvenienced by Iraq’s Civil War must be brought into the US; this conflagration is not entirely America’s fault, and, more important, some of its victims are would-be victimizers of the US and the Iraqis that have stood by our forces.

I remember in the late 1990s one of the events that led me to a far less charitable view of Israel and its self-concept as a champion of human rights was Israel’s apparent indifference to the South Lebanese Army (SLA). The SLA was left to the wolves of Hezbollah in the wake of the Israeli withdrawal. I recall a specific discussion with a former IDF soldier, with whom I was acquainted, who discussed the topic only by mentioning whether the withdrawal would help Israel or not. “But what about these Arabs whom you have trained, worked with, and would now endanger?” I wondered. I would hate to endure the same sickening feeling in the face of a similarly ugly and selfish act by America.

Far better to be a nation of honor than one with mere military power. An honorable nation stands by its commitments and, if they prove unsustainable, at least stands by its friends. To leave Iraqis that have worked for the US to the mercies of the resistance or Sadr’s thugs would be a truly worst case scenario and a cause of great shame to America . . . worse even than this botched, though largely well-intentioned, military campaign.