I would be glad to consider problems such as this if we could come to a consensus that withdrawing from Iraq is most in the national interest. There won’t be any other kind of withdrawal but “early withdrawal”–if it is wise the next administration, no matter the party affiliation, will withdraw the bulk of our forces long before Iraq has been made secure or stable.

The “political solution” there is failing, and I don’t think anyone thinks that the security situation has seriously improved (Warner observed unsurprisingly that it was worse than the last time he was there) and I don’t see how it is going to be saved by the shedding of more American blood. Getting our people out of Iraq remains the priority for me, but justice does demand that we take the asylum seekers in as well. Priority would need to be given to the smaller minority groups, who likely have no future in the new Iraq. Even Sunnis have more of a fighting chance in the new order than Assyrians and Turkomen.

No one is going to be excited at the prospect of taking in Sunni refugees, and here the scrutiny of asylum-seekers will have to be particularly intense. In cases such as this, perhaps allied states in the region could pick up some of the slack and take in those refugees more likely to adapt to their societies than they would to ours; convincing them/bribing them to do this would take some doing, but it might be a way to provide asylum for those who need to escape Iraq as it collapses without unduly threatening the U.S. Jordan has already taken in a great many refugees, so they will be a hard sell, so the Saudis would likely be the obvious candidate, and they will not be terribly enthusiastic about this, either. Perhaps the Gulf states…But there will have to be some kind of arbitrary limit established. Accommodating the movement of more than a tenth of the Iraqi population, which would be the top limit, would probably be politically impossible for any administration to sell to the public, and beyond that level I would have a hard time justifying it. You could also expect many of the people who talk about immigration in terms of being humanitarian to suddenly discover the wisdom of keeping out the foreigners when they are confronted with some of these asylum-seekers.

In the aftermath of Vietnam, the Vietnamese have integrated fairly well, the Cambodians less so, and the Hmong least well of all.

How many Goths did Rome take in before it fell?

This set of issues must be carefully considered by those who would put early withdrawal on the table.

I am not enthusiastic at such a prospect for all kinds of reasons, and there would obviously need to be some close scrutiny of asylum-seekers so that jihadis and nationalist fanatics can’t get into the country to launch attacks here, but if done wisely and scrupulously it seems to me that this would be the least that we should do for the Iraqis when we finally do withdraw.