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U.S. sanctions in Middle East reminiscent of Holocaust
Sun Apr 11, 2004 02:21
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> U.S. sanctions in Middle East reminiscent of Holocaust

IRAQ: Government uses U.N. weapons process as pretense for aggression The definition of "genocide" is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political or cultural group. The definition of the word "holocaust" is the mass slaughter of people. What would you have done if you lived in Nazi Germany? Imagine you knew about the government's extermination of Jews, homosexuals, communists, gypsies, trade unionists, physically and mentally challenged people, and many others. What would you have done?Since 1990, the United States has been engaging in an ongoing policy of genocide against the people of Iraq. It started with the Gulf War. According to the government's own conservative estimate, 32,000 Iraqi children, 40,000 Iraqi women and 86,000 Iraqi men were killed during that war. But our systematic destruction of the people of Iraq really began after the war ended.The devastation that the United States' sanctions have brought to the people of Iraq is truly indescribable. The New England Journal of Medicine noticed the effects of the sanctions immediately. In 1992, it reported that 46,700 children had died in the first seven months following the war.In March 1999, the United Nations issued a report called the "Current Humanitarian Situation in Iraq." The report points out that Iraq has "experienced a shift from relative affluence to massive poverty." It continues to say that "malnutrition was not a public health problem in Iraq prior to the embargo." Now "32 percent of children under five, (or) 960,000 children are chronically malnourished."In June 1997, the United Nations verified that 1.2 million people, including 750,000 children under the age of five, have died because of a scarcity of food and medicine. The economic sanctions that the United States has imposed on Iraq are a gross violation of the Geneva Convention. Article 54 of the Geneva Convention clearly states that "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited." The United States claims that its oil-for-food program is designed to help the people of Iraq. But as the U.N. report shows, things have gotten worse under this program. "Oil-for-food" allows Iraq to sell $5 billion worth of oil every year for food. But according to the United Nations, Iraq needs a minimum of $30 billion annually in order to provide enough food and medicine for its citizens.While the U.S. government continues to feed us the same story - that Saddam Hussein is to blame for everything - many other people are standing up against the genocide taking place in Iraq. All our government ever talks about are the weapons inspections. But Scott Ritter, the former head of the U.N. Weapons inspection team, told NBC's Today show on Dec. 17, 1998, "the U.S. has perverted the U.N. weapons process by using it as a tool to justify military actions, falsely so ... The U.S. was using the inspection process as a trigger for war."When asked about the sanctions, Ritter said, "We're killing 5,000 kids under the age of five every month. People say Saddam's killing them, but ultimately the sanctions are killing them."Last month, Hans von Sponeck, the United Nations' top humanitarian official in Iraq, resigned in protest of what he called the "human tragedy" of sanctions about which he "could not stay silent." One day later, Jutta Burghardt, the head of the World Food Program in Iraq, resigned in solidarity with von Sponeck in protest of the sanctions.Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark stated, "There is one crime against humanity in this last decade of the millennium that exceeds all others in its magnitude, cruelty and portent. It is the U.S.-forced sanctions against the 20 million people of Iraq ... If the U.N. participates in such genocidal sanctions backed by the threat of military violence - and if the people of the world fail to prevent such conduct - the violence, terror and human misery of the new millennium will exceed anything we have known."What's amazing to me is that the United States does not even deny the holocaust we have unleashed against the people of Iraq. On May 12, 1996, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was interviewed on CBS's 60 Minutes. She was asked, "We have heard that a half million children have died ... that's more children than (those that) died in Hiroshima. Is the price worth it?" Albright responded, "I think this is a very hard choice, but ... we think the price is worth it." That price is now more than 750,000 children who are dead as a direct result of these sanctions. That price is more than 250 people dying every single day. The U.N. report says, "Famine threatens four million people in sanctions-hit Iraq, or one-fifth of the population." It goes on to explain that, "sanctions are inhibiting the means of transportation to provide water and sanitation services to the civilian population of Iraq - what has become increasingly clear is that no significant movement towards food security can be achieved so long as the embargo remains in place." The United States has framed the entire debate around Saddam Hussein. We're told that this is a man who gassed his own people. This is absolutely correct; in fact he did this two times. He gassed the Kurds in 1987, and in 1990. But what we're not told is that Saddam Hussein is a man the U.S. government completely supported at this time. We gave Saddam Hussein billions and billions of dollars during his war with Iran. The United States also blocked the passage of a U.N. resolution condemning Saddam Hussein for those very attacks on his people.The idea that the United States has imposed these sanctions to help the people of Iraq is ridiculous. When countries commit acts of genocide they do not openly admit what they are doing. As MIT professor Noam Chomsky points out in "The New Military Humanism," when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, he said it was to "end slavery." When Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, he said it was for "human rights." Likewise, when we killed about 200,000 Iraqis in the Gulf War, we didn't say it was for oil, we said it was to "protect democracy."The Associated Press asked retired Army Col. Harry Summers on Jan. 16 about the current situation in Iraq. He said the United States has a long history of demonizing its enemies. "It helps explain things to the American people," Summers said. "It always makes it easier to fight a war if you demonize people so that you're not killing human beings, you're killing the devil."The Nazis killed more than one million Jewish children during World War II. The United States has killed 750,000 Iraqi children since 1991. What happened to "Never Again?" The government doesn't deny these deaths; it just "thinks the price is worth it."Next quarter, there will be events and protests on this campus that you can take part in to demand an end to the genocide of the Iraqi people.I asked at the beginning of this column what you would have done if you knew about your government's policy of genocide. Now I'm asking you what you're going to do.

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