Doing the right (and left) thing on Iraq

5 March 2007, 2255 EST

I missed Alex Harrowell’s important February 24 post at a Fistful of Euros. The essence?

First, Americans and Europeans need to protect those, such as translators, who’ve helped us in Iraq.

Second, a basic implication of the “Pottery Barn Rule” is that the US–and the other members of the “Coalition of the Willing”–should be taking in a great many more refugees.

So it’s time to talk seriously about the people who have worked for us in Iraq. The Americans are only accepting risible numbers of refugees. 50 per cent of Iraqi refugees in Europe are in Sweden. It won’t do to claim that the situation is peachy in Iraq. The interpreters, for example, are marked men.

Maybe this is something that bloggers and blog-readers of all political stripes can get behind? If you’re in the United States, how about writing the White House and your local congressperson? If you’re residing elsewhere, choose whatever political office seems appropriate.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.