Sean Gonsalves
Thanks
to the state department and our "adversarial" free press, even those
who consider themselves well-informed about foreign policy have tremendous gaps
in their knowledge when it comes to our policy in Iraq.
You
may have heard the numbers, which have been confirmed by the most reputable
medical journals in the world: Over 500,000 Iraqi children (plus a million Iraqi
adult civilians) have died as a direct result of the sanctions that we imposed
ten years ago on that formerly prosperous nation.
Let’s
try to look at this in human terms, which is difficult for many Americans
because Iraqis, as a rule, are not portrayed as human beings, even in a
"bleeding heart" media.
It’s
mentally lazy to solely blame Saddam, who (no rational person disputes) is a
nasty dictator (although, his human rights transgressions don’t come close to
the atrocities committed by some of our foreign fiends – I mean, friends). But
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s sagely advice comes to mind: "We’re not all
guilty. But we are all responsible."
Some
readers might object: "Hey, sanctions are better than bombing. So what is
Sean complaining about now?" First of all, Iraq’s infrastructure was
completely destroyed by our bombs. To say that Iraq is a threat to world peace
is like saying a third-grade bully is a threat to Mike Tyson.
Once
you cut through the propaganda, a question arises: Is it our policy to simply
punish any "rogue" nation that even thinks about challenging American
dominance of Middle East oil reserves?
The
explicit purpose of the sanctions is to severely harm the civilian population in
order to "persuade" the "duped" to oust Saddam. Never mind
the moral repugnance of such coercive policy objectives, the intellectual
bankruptcy of the policy is that, in this case, the sanctions cannot possibly
reach their own intended purpose.
If
Iraqi civilians are forced to eke out a hand-to-mouth existence day-to-day, how
in the hell are they supposed to kick a dictator out of power?! What political
genius came up with that genocidal idea?
Now,
genocide is a much abused term in our world where talk-radio (il)logic reigns,
but that’s exactly what Dennis Halliday called it. Halliday was a senior UN
official, who resigned last year in protest of the stupid and cruel policy.
Some
people think the Iraqi people would have the medicine and food they need if only
Saddam would stop spending it on palaces and what-not. Not only is this an
embarrassingly mis-informed view, it’s also like blaming President Clinton alone
for the increasing number of homeless people in America even though there’s a
federal budget surplus.
As
UN humanitarian coordinator, Hans Van Sponeck points out, the UN – not the Iraqi
government – controls the money from the oil-for-food program. The UN
distributes the food and medicine purchased with that money in northern Iraq and
carefully monitors the distribution of these basic survival goods throughout the
rest of the nation.
A
major reason that limited medical supplies are often not being delivered is
because there’s an extreme shortage of delivery trucks and personnel. "You
have heard, I’m sure, a lot about the overstocking of medicine. When you get
from someone a monocausal explanation then you should start getting suspicious.
It is not – I repeat, it is not – a premeditated act of withholding medicine.
It’s much more complex than that," Van Sponeck told a group of Seattle
doctors who have gone to Iraq several times to study the situation and openly
violate the sanctions, bringing medicine and toys to Iraqi children. (According
to US federal law, you can get a 12 year jail sentence and a million dollar fine
for bringing toys and medicine to Iraqi children.)
"If
you earn a $1.50 a month in a warehouse that has medicine, will you work 14
hours a day? I doubt it. You can’t even afford to be there eight hours a day
because you have to somehow make some other money in order to get at least
enough to get into your kitty to finance the needs of your household," Van
Sponeck explained to members of the Washington Physicians for Social
Responsibility.
Also
banned from Iraq are medical textbooks and other educational material. "De-professionalization….It
is frightening….People who are well-trained have no chance to work with their
full capacity in the area of their training….You have what I would call
knowledge depletion. Right now we are setting the stage for depriving another
(Iraqi) generation of opportunity to become responsible national and
international citizens of tomorrow. That may be the most serious aspect of it
all, apart from the nutritional deficiency, apart from the health problems,
apart from the inadequacy of the food….It’s intellectual genocide," Van
Sponeck said. There’s that word again.
And
this isn’t even a campaign issue in the land of the free?
Last
week I interviewed Scott Ritter. Ritter was one of the UNSCOM weapons inspectors
in Iraq – the UN team in charge of dismantling Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction program. Can you tell me about the "threat" that Saddam
Hussein poses to the Middle East region, in particular; and the world in
general?
"Let’s
talk about the weapons. In 1991, did Iraq have a viable weapons of mass
destruction capability? Your darn right they did. They had a massive chemical
weapons program. They had a giant biological weapons program. They had
long-range ballistic missiles and they had a nuclear weapons program that was
about six months away from having a viable weapon.
"Now
after seven years of work by UNSCOM inspectors, there was no more (mass
destruction) weapons program. It had been eliminated….When I say eliminated
I’m talking about facilities destroyed….
"The
weapons stock had been, by and large, accounted for – removed, destroyed or
rendered harmless. Means of production had been eliminated, in terms of the
factories that can produce this….
"There
were some areas that we didn’t have full accounting for. And this is what
plagued UNSCOM. Security Council 687 is an absolute resolution. It requires that
Iraq be disarmed 100 percent. It’s what they call ‘quantitative disarmament.’
Iraq will not be found in compliance until it has been disarmed to a 100 percent
level. That’s the standard set forth by the security council and as implementors
of the security council resolution the weapons inspectors had no latitude to
seek to do anything less than that – 80 percent was not acceptable; 90 percent
was not acceptable; only 100 percent was acceptable.
"And
this was the Achilles tendon, so to speak, of UNSCOM. Because by the time 1997
came around, Iraq had been qualitatively disarmed. On any meaningful benchmark –
in terms of defining Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capability; in terms of
accessing whether or not Iraq posed a threat, not only to its immediate
neighbors, but the region and the world as a whole – Iraq had been eliminated as
such a threat….
"What
was Iraq hiding? Documentation primarily – documents that would enable them to
reconstitute – at a future date – weapons of mass destruction capability…But
all of this is useless….unless Iraq has access to the tens, if not hundreds,
of millions of dollars required to rebuild the industrial infrastructure
(necessary) to build these weapons. They didn’t have it in 1998. They don’t have
it today. This paranoia about what Iraq is doing now that there aren’t weapons
inspectors reflects a lack of understanding the reality in Iraq.
"The
economic sanctions have devastated this nation. The economic sanctions combined
with the effects of the Gulf War, have assured that Iraq operate as a Third
World nation in terms of industrial output and capacity. They have invested
enormous resources in trying to build a 150 kilometer range ballistic missile
called the Al Samoud.
"In
1998 they ran some flight tests of prototypes that they had built of this
missile. They fizzled. One didn’t get off the stand. The other flipped over on
the stand and blew up. The other one got up in the air and then went out of
control and blew up. They don’t have the ability to produce a short range
ballistic missile yet alone a long-range ballistic missile….
"The
other thing to realize is: they are allowed to build this missile. It’s not
against the law. The law says anything under 150 kilometers they can build and
yet people are treating this missile as if it’s a threat to regional
security…It’s a tactical battlefield missile, that’s it. Yet, (Congressman
Tom) Lantos and others treat this as though its some sort of latent capability
and requires a ballistic missile defense system to guard against it. It’s
ridiculous. Iraq has no meaningful weapons of mass destruction program today.
"Now,
having said that, I firmly believe we have to get weapons inspection back in for
the purpose of monitoring…especially if we lift economic sanctions. And I
believe that there should be immediate lifting of economic sanctions in return
for the resumption of meaningful arms inspections. Iraq would go for that. What
Iraq is not going for is this so-called suspension of sanctions where the Iraqi
economy is still controlled by the security council and held hostage to the whim
of the United States, which has shown itself irresponsible in terms of
formulating Iraq policy over the past decade. The United States still has a
policy of overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein – in total disregard for
international law and the provisions of the relevant security council
resolutions.
"I,
for one, believe that A) Iraq represents a threat to no one, and B) Iraq will
not represent a threat to anyone if we can get weapons inspectors back in. Iraq
will accept these inspectors if we agree to the immediate lifting of economic
sanctions. The security council should re-evaluate Iraq’s disarmament obligation
from a qualitative standpoint and not a quantitative standpoint."