Juan Cole: U.S. must provide $1 billion + for Iraqi refugees. (Now spends $15 B per month on war)

The world would be profoundly different if we all saw the events in the Middle East the way that Juan Cole does...

Top 10 Challenges Facing the US in the Middle East, 2008

10. Helping broker a deal in Lebanon between the March 14 Movement and the Shiites so that a new president can be elected and a national unity government can be formed. <snip>

9. The US should exercise its good offices to encourage continued dialogue between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The capture of Baghdad by the Shiites and the ethnic cleansing of most Sunnis from it have set the stage for a big Sunni-Shiite battle for the capital as soon as the US troops get out of the way.... the US should be attempting to bring Iran in from the cold, now that the NIE has absolved it of nuclear-weapons ambitions.

8. Congress should expand funding for, and guarantee the future of, the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point. Its researchers do among the very best jobs of analyzing the writings and activities of the Salafi Jihadis, and so of combatting them. Few government institutions are as effective. If the US government were serious about the threat of terrorism, I would not even have to make this plea. Of course, if Bush and Cheney had really cared about the threat of al-Qaeda, they would have gone after it and gotten Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri rather than rushing off on a fool's errand in Iraq.

7. The US must repair its tattered relations with Turkey. <snip>

6. The US must keep the pressure on Pervez Musharraf to hold free and fair, early elections in Pakistan... they should not be postponed past March 1. <snip>

5. The US and NATO have to stop doing search and destroy missions in Afghanistan. <snip>

4. The US must facilitate provincial elections in Iraq. They are arguably more important than any other step. They would solve a number of important problems. <snip>

3. The US Congress must allocate substantial funds, on the order of $1 billion or more, for Iraqi refugee relief in Syria and Jordan. UNO relief funds are running out. Iraqis' own savings are running out. Children are not in school and are going hungry. People are being exploited, including young girls forced into prostitution. A majority of the 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria went there in 2007, and almost all of them have been forced out of Baghdad and other areas because of the political instability that the United States unleashed in their country. The surge is being touted as a victory in the US press, but it seems to have displaced 700,000 Iraqi civilians! The US is spending $15 billion a month on the Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars. It can afford $1 billion a year for refugee relief. This is our responsibility. How future generations of Iraqis view the United States will in part depend on whether we do this. I ask all Americans to write your congressional representatives and press them on this humanitarian issue.

2. The Bush administration should expend all of its remaining political capital in the region to have the Israelis return the Golan Heights to Syria. The Golan was captured in 1967. By the United Nations Charter, countries may not permanently grab the territory of their neighbors. The Syrians will have to agree to keep the Golan a demilitarized zone, with UNO blue helmets patrolling as a safeguard. In return, Syria would have to agree to cease backing Palestinian militants and would have to play a positive role in creating a Palestinian state. Damascus would also have to work to restore social peace in Lebanon. Such a deal might help to detach Syria from its alliance with Iran. That in turn would weaken Hizbullah. This deal would be good for Israeli security, and if it helped speed up the creation of a Palestinian state, might even keep Israel from falling into the Apartheid situation that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently said he fears.

1. The US must insist that the Israeli siege of Gaza must be lifted. A third of Palestinians killed by Israel this year were innocent civilians. The agricultural sector is being destroyed because farmers cannot export their goods owing to the Israeli blockade. Food, water, essential medicines are all being denied to civilian populations, including children. If Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is so worried about Israel being seen as an Apartheid state, he should release Gazans from their penitentiary and stop deploying collective punishment against civilians.

Kudos to Swamp Rat: