Return to Iraq?

03/20/2007

Paul Munnis


We are hearing an interesting dialog take place over coffee cups these days. It pertains to Iraq and to the flight of the intelligentsia from that hapless land.

People are discussing whether it is possible to rebuild Iraq without an intelligentsia there to provide needed investment requiring skilled human capital and local leadership to those citizens in trouble due to the loss of homes, lacking heads of families, and in terms of other social factors like a loss of education to the children of Iraq.

Some posit that reconstruction could take generations to accomplish and that an American presence will do little to help unless we become an Iraqi welfare agency.

Indeed some argue that that is the future if America wins the war in Iraq, to become permanent crutches for lost generations of Iraqi’s.

The discussion goes that without capable community leaders there is a vacuum created that can only be filled by political factions since the intelligentsia is not there to lead. Even the mosques are now hollowed out with the brains of Islam having left for Jordan, Iran, and other places of sanctuary and refuge.

One speaker claims that luring these people back to Iraq, even with the siren call of oil income, is not going to succeed because these people are smart enough to press their claims as unwilling refugees and thus to win their subsidy claim even while living in a safer and more prosperous society.

Furthermore refugees are trying to make a life for themselves and are thus becoming re-invested in other places. To return is to invalidate that investment.

As the discussion developed it became more difficult to argue the other side of the question and to state why refugees might want to return to Iraq. About the only pull that can be stated is ownership of land and a desire to reunite with the remnants of family, many of whom were old and sick and could not manage to escape. In a left-handed way, the refugees abandoned these people and thus do not expect to ever see them again.

To sum up the discussion, people are asking why anyone with brains would want to return to hell on earth. It is difficult to argue for Iraqi reconstruction.