Mike Gerson Writing About His President's Failures
Another Test in Iraq: Our Aid to Refugees
By Michael Gerson
Wednesday, August 22, 2007; Page A17
The Bush administration correctly asserts that the entire Middle East, from royal palaces to terrorist camps, is watching the eventual outcome in Iraq to determine the state of American resolve. But the region is also taking a more immediate measure of America's commitment to its friends: our response to the Iraqi refugee crisis. And this, too, is a matter of national credibility and honor.
Over the past several months, the American response to this crisis has improved from dismal to minimal. The United States is funding its normal 30 percent of U.N. refugee efforts and cooperating more closely with UNICEF and the World Food Program. But these global initiatives amount to tens of millions of dollars of help to millions of refugees -- completely unequal to the scale of the need. American efforts to help internally displaced Iraqis through the International Organization for Migration were funde…