Our Deadly Record of Crapping on those Who Helped Us in Iraq — Now Repeats in Afghanistan — Making Us Not Exactly an Admirable Nation

© 2013 Peter Free

 

27 September 2013

 

 

A telling example of how the cowardly American bureaucracy works

 

Former infantry squad leader and Marine Corps instructor, Paul Szoldra, summed the situation:

 

 

Afghan interpreter Janis Shinwari onced saved an American soldier's life in a firefight and faces death threats from the Taliban due to his service to the U.S. military.

 

 

Shinwari, like most Iraqi and Afghan interpreters, was promised a Special Immigrant Visa after serving one year in his translation duties.

 

Two weeks ago, he finally got approved — only to have his new visas for him and his family later revoked with no explanation.

 

An Op-Ed at The Guardian written by U.S. Army soldier Matt Zeller explains:

 

[I]n the two weeks since the State Department issued his visa, an anonymous "informant" contacted the US government and claimed all sorts of things about Janis.

 

The informant's bogus claims eventually reached an analyst at the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) in Washington DC who promptly put a security hold on Janis' visa, prompting the State Department to revoke it all together.

 

It's fairly common for the Taliban to read the US news. I can't help but think that they learned of our successful efforts to secure Janis his visa via the extensive coverage our efforts generated.

 

They used to call our base in Afghanistan and claim all sorts of lies about our interpreters in an attempt to get us to fire them.

 

The Taliban are almost certainly the source of the anonymous tip and now they have more time to hunt him and his family down and kill them.

 

Unfortunately, the story of Shinwari is not unique.

 

© 2013 Paul Szoldra, Translators Who Risked Their Lives For American Troops Are Getting Screwed By The US, Business Insider (26 September 2013)

 

 

For those with short memories — consider our reprehensible record of death-dealing ingratitude in Iraq

 

Apparently, when you are rich and mighty like the United States, appreciating the foreign “little” people, who regularly pull our incautious, testosterone-impregnated balls from the fire is not an ethical mandate.

 

The International Rescue Committee’s Anna Husarska once wrote representatively:

 

 

Having received death threats for cooperating with American forces in Iraq, Saman Kareem Ahmad, a Kurd who worked as a translator for four years with U.S. Marines, was admitted to the United States on a special visa in 2006.

 

In February, however, the Department of Homeland Security’s Citizenship and Immigration Services summarily denied his application for a green card.

 

The reason?

 

That Ahmad had once served with the militia of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), a group that fought a long guerrilla action against Saddam Hussein’s government, was his Catch 22: because it had taken up arms against an established government, the KDP was regarded as a “terrorist organization.”

 

No matter that it was Saddam’s government and that the U.S. covertly supported the KDP’s actions and that the KDP now belongs to a coalition that has seats in the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad.

 

During the first four years of the war in Iraq, fewer than 500 Iraqis were allowed into the United States.

 

After an uproar in the media, in February 2007 the State Department said it would admit 7,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of that September.

 

Yet not even this minimal quota could be achieved. In March 2007, eight Iraqi refugees were admitted; in April, one; in May, one; in June, 63; in July, 57. By the end of September, only 1,608 of the 7,000 slots had been filled.

 

© 2008 Anna Husarska, Exile Off Main Street: Refugees and America’s Ingratitude, World Affairs (Summer 2008) (paragraphs split)

 

 

Why do “we” act this way?

 

A small-minded bureaucrat is always safer denying something, rather than doing it and taking a chance on whatever was approved not working out.

 

He or she can always point to the institutionalized cowardice embodied in the USA Patriot Act of 2001 (and its renewals) as justification for “caution”.

 

 

I imply “cowardly” bureaucrat because . . .

 

Doing the right thing takes courage, more often than not.  Courage is not a bureaucratic trait.

 

In contrast, people who actually have direct responsibility for others’ lives quickly learn that freedom from risk and criticism is an illusion. Doing what is ethically and immediately right takes precedence over one’s fear of second guessing.

 

It is not an accident that the military people, who worked with our foreign assistants in Iraq and Afghanistan, are the first to support those people’s admission to the United States.  These troops know what real physical risk and death are.  They are not frightened by the phantoms conjured by paranoid minds.

 

On the other hand, desk-bound bureaucrats have little to no physical contact with the deadly world.  It is understandable that their psychic perspectives are narrowly limited by all manner of improbable apprehensions.

 

The farther one is from real danger, the more likely one is to substitute imagined terror for it.  So these timid folk settle for, “Can’t have that possibly career-damaging thing happen to me.”

 

 

Does any of this matter — in anything other than the ethical sense?

 

Yes.

 

A nation’s ethical character is estimated, in part, by how it treats those, who risk their lives to aid it.  And too long a record of demonstrably deadly ingratitude means that, eventually, the supply of foreign assistants and assistance is going to dry up.

 

 

The moral? — The American record for murderous ungratefulness, toward those who aid us, makes us look really small

 

Like a crassly selfish and anti-humanitarian Imperium.

 

That’s why honor matters.  Even though it has been out of fashion for decades.