What we owe the Iraqis

„What we need to do first is provide our share of the funding necessary to help those in the most dire circumstances. The United Nations humanitarian appeal for aid for vulnerable and displaced Iraqis this year calls for just over $700 million. The United States needs to fund at least half of that amount this year. As the oil infrastructure improves in Iraq, oil revenue will follow in five or six years, and the Iraqis can take on the burden themselves. The U.S. contribution would not be a small sum, but would be trifling in comparison to what this war has cost us to date.

Next, we need to increase the resettlement of Iraqis who have no prospect for returning to Iraq or whose situations are so perilous that life in Iraq is simply not possible. This includes, among others, Iraqis who have worked with U.S. institutions and whose lives have been compromised by this association.

Finally, we need to give the United Nations a mandate to leave the safety of the Green Zone and go into the squatter slums where the biggest humanitarian problems exist. U.N. workers in Baghdad bristle over the restrictions placed on them. The United Nations, by imposing these restrictions, has become a contributor to the humanitarian problem. I noted the great pride that we all should feel over our response to the humanitarian crisis faced at the end of the war in Vietnam. Whatever one may feel about our involvement in that conflict, we rose, albeit belatedly, to the challenge of the humanitarian consequences of our actions. We should do no less in Iraq.”