Iraqi employees campaign continues.
David Miliband has written about the FCO's policy on helping the "locally engaged staff" in Iraq on his blog. Dan Hardie writes about what else you can do in his latest post on the we can't turn them away campaign, but where better to stress the strength of feeling than on Miliband's own talking shop? Try your best to polite. Here's my comment, lest it isn't published:
Mr Miliband, I'll try to be polite in my response to this post, but when you fail to even mention in your entry why the locally-engaged staff need either financial assistance or resettlement, as you put it, it's difficult to take your claim that you feel strongly about this issue seriously.
As the many others above me have already made the point on why the current commitment simply isn't enough and excludes those who are in desperate need of safety, I'll instead approach this from a different angle. If reports in certain sections of the media are to be believed, you yourself were at best agnostic about the Iraq war. Whatever you feelings were then, it's apparent that our involvement in Iraq has been a disaster. At the very least 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died; the last Lancet report, which the Foreign Office privately indicated was based on credible methodology, suggested the toll could be as much as 650,000.
Let's not be involved in one more death in the poor benighted country than is necessary. These individuals risked their lives, and dared to dream in a better tomorrow for their country. To abandon them now would be the final insult and repudiation of their hope. I appreciate the difficulties involved, but those currently outside the remit of the announced change in policy deserve better.
Labels: David Miliband, Iraq disaster, refuge for Iraqis, we can't turn them away
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