Wednesday, May 14, 2008
"Good Luck, Son"
According to Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, that pretty much summs up the administration attitude to Iraqi translators who put their lives on the line to work with Americans and are now being left behind in droves. But they are not forgotten by those who worked with them.
It took two years for Jack to get a visa. He is one of the very few to succeed among thousands who have worked as interpreters for the United States military.Good for them for showing true character and what a sad state our country is in that our government is not leading the way.
To many veterans that is not an acceptable rate, given the risks the interpreters took, and Colonel Zacchea and others are taking up the cause.
They have created a growing network of aid groups, spending countless hours navigating a byzantine immigration system that they feel unnecessarily keeps their allies in harm’s way. There is, they say, a debt that must be repaid to the Iraqis who helped the most. To them it is an obligation both moral and pragmatic.
“It’s like this disjointed underground railroad that exists,” said Paul Rieckhoff, who served with the Army in Iraq as a first lieutenant in 2003 and 2004. Mr. Rieckhoff is now executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which has more than 85,000 members and a Web site at www.iava.org.
Leaving an interpreter behind, Mr. Rieckhoff said, is “like leaving one of your soldiers back in Iraq and saying, ‘Good luck, son.’
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