Angelina Jolie: Stay the Course

Will she ever eat lunch in Hollywood again?

My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis.

Today’s humanitarian crisis in Iraq — and the potential consequences for our national security — are great. Can the United States afford to gamble that 4 million or more poor and displaced people, in the heart of Middle East, won’t explode in violent desperation, sending the whole region into further disorder?

What we cannot afford, in my view, is to squander the progress that has been made. In fact, we should step up our financial and material assistance. UNHCR has appealed for $261 million this year to provide for refugees and internally displaced persons. That is not a small amount of money — but it is less than the U.S. spends each day to fight the war in Iraq. I would like to call on each of the presidential candidates and congressional leaders to announce a comprehensive refugee plan with a specific timeline and budget as part of their Iraq strategy.

As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible.

It seems to me that now is the moment to address the humanitarian side of this situation. Without the right support, we could miss an opportunity to do some of the good we always stated we intended to do. [Angelina Jolie in the Washington Post]

Jolie’s opinion wouldn’t have much significance if it weren’t so utterly against the grain of prevailing Hollywood views, and I commend her courage and independence in speaking it. There is nothing humanitarian or compassionate about abandoning a nation to terror and genocide without giving that nation the opportunity to establish basic social order. We did not break Iraq, but we accepted the responsibility to help Iraq fix itself. Critics rightly attacked the Bush Administration’s failure to foresee the immense task of reestablishing that order. Many of those same critics are even more short-sighted for their own failure to consider the consequences of surrender to Al Qaeda.

A related interesting fact is that McCain outpolls Obama by ten points on who would handle the Iraq war best. Even the famously liberal Pew Institute shows growing optimism. Americans wish they had never become involved in Iraq, but by a margin of 53-39, they now believe that our effort there will suceed. Pray that it continues to be justified. Public opinion does tend to lag well behind events on the ground when the news media are so reluctant to report on how those events have changed.