It Will be a Better Iraq in 2004; Who Will Say So?

We don’t believe in sanctions to pressure nasty governments because Western sanctions have loopholes for helping the weak and needy. Nasty governments exploit the loopholes, leaving the weak and needy weaker and needier and the government stronger and nastier. The UN imposed sanctions on Iraq certainly led to great hardships for the people and enrichment for Saddam and his weapons programs. To some extent, we were sympathetic to the lefties on the single point of hardship for the Iraqi people, though we blamed Saddam and they blamed the Clinton Administration.

We don’t believe in sanctions to pressure nasty governments because Western sanctions have loopholes for helping the weak and needy. Nasty governments exploit the loopholes, leaving the weak and needy weaker and needier and the government stronger and nastier. The UN imposed sanctions on Iraq certainly led to great hardships for the people and enrichment for Saddam and his weapons programs. To some extent, we were sympathetic to the lefties on the single point of hardship for the Iraqi people, though we blamed Saddam and they blamed the Clinton Administration.

A quick trip down memory lane… In the late 1990s, the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), The Campaign to End Iraq Sanctions-Ireland, Americans against World Empire, and Common Dreams News Center gave you such tidbits as:

• “In simple terms, more Iraqi children have died as a result of sanctions than the combined toll of two atomic bombs on Japan.”
• “One Child Dies Every 10 Minutes; 6000 Children Each Month; Nearly 1 Million Dead in 10 Years — directly attributable to the impact of sanctions.” And,
• “Imagine if a U.S. cruise missile were to land on a kindergarten and kill 165 children. Imagine now that it was launched knowing it would hit that kindergarten, and further, that one of these missiles was launched at a different kindergarten every day for a month.”

Piling on were: Salon.com, BBC, Frontline, Noam Chomsky, Leslie Stahl in a memorable interview with Secretary Albright in which she raised the Hiroshima analogy, The Green Party, Peace Action USA, Antiwar.com, American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice, One World News Service and other “activists” and organizations. All spreading the slander that America was killing Iraqi children.

Now it is 2003. So where are the pundits and their news outlets hailing the end of sanctions? Where is the real story of the children of Iraq — the one about Iraqi children killed by Saddam to “convince” their parents to cooperate? The one about the hundred Iraqi children liberated from a prison in Baghdad by the Marines? The one about the terror of Saddam, Uday and Qusay under which the children — and their parents — lived? The one about the orphans — the children of the tens or hundreds of thousands of people murdered by the regime and tossed in the mass graves currently being uncovered?

As we head into 2004, all 22 universities and 43 technical institutes and colleges in Iraq are open. Coalition forces have rehabbed over 1,500 schools. All 240 hospitals and more than 1,200 clinics are open; pharmaceutical distribution has gone from essentially nothing to 700 tons in May to a current total of 12,000 tons. The Coalition has helped administer over 22 million vaccinations to Iraq’s children. [Thank you to the Marines for the statistics; we have others for later use.]

This will be a better year for Iraq’s children. And adults. It would only be fair for the loudest mouths of the 1990s to admit it and give credit where it is due. We’re waiting but not with much hope.