Death Touches US All, United States Citizens and Iraqi Civilians

by: Betsy L. Angert

Tue Aug 07, 2007 at 22:27:33 PM EDT

copyright © 2007 Betsy L. Angert

It was a lovely Saturday evening.  We had no idea that within minutes, the telephone would ring and we would hear the news.  A young woman, a beloved wife, the sister of eight siblings, and an associate of ours, had passed.  Prior to the call, we did as Americans frequently do.  Four of us piled into a late model automobile and drove down quiet streets.  It was after dusk, early in the evening, when we arrived at the elegant restaurant.  The lights were low.  The ambiance was tranquil. 

The hostess directed us to our table.  She gave us a window seat.  A stream surrounded the building.  Ducks, geese, and swans, gently swam in the water.  Birds quietly passed overhead.  The server bought each of us a cool glass of iced water.  Then he asked if we would like coffee, tea, a carbonated beverage, or perhaps an alcohol based brew.  We had many choices.  Food was placed in front of us.  The supply of fodder seemed endless.  Music played.  There were no bullets or bombs blasting.  Conditions and circumstances were unlike those in Iraq.

Teairra Washington-Thomas, twenty-four years young, lost her life when a drunk driver smashed into her vehicle.  The automobile Washington-Thomas drove flipped over and over again.  The long and graceful neck of this youthful woman snapped.  As we heard the scant details, we observed the beauty of nature just outside the window.  Our heads bowed.  We verbalized; Iraqi citizens must mourn their loses each day.  How devastating.  How painful, how purely paralyzing life must be for those that struggle to survive in Iraq.

According to a July 2007 briefing paper published by Oxfam and the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq, civilians in that country are confronted with catastrophes each and every day. For those that reside in a war-torn nation circumstances are never calm.  The innocent do not anticipate a quiet night with friends and family.  Entertainment is rarely elegant.  Entrées are not well prepared and abundant.  Water is not served; nor is it wasted.  Good health, education, and employment are sadly but a dream.

Iraqis are suffering from a growing lack of food, shelter, water and sanitation, health care, education, and employment. Of the four million Iraqis who are dependent on food assistance, only 60 per cent currently have access to rations through the government-run Public Distribution System (PDS), down from 96 per cent in 2004.

On a recent evening tour of Baghdad car dealers and shopping districts, it was easy to see that conditions, despite 12 years of sanctions in the wake of the Gulf War, are improving, even if only slightly.

Streets and storefronts are bathed in light, thanks to electrical plants that now provide 24-hour power. Food, clothing and electronic equipment is everywhere.  Kinetic crowds of young men and women crowd the sidewalks.  Restaurants and pizza parlors are packed.  Theaters show movies from Italy, France, and even the United States, although most of them, judging from the billboards outside the theater, appear to be B-grade or worse.

For the more intellectual crowd, there is the Orfali Art Gallery, which has offered exhibits, movies, and musical events since 1963. On this night, a CD movie of an opera, "The Tales of Hoffman," was playing on an outdoor screen, while, inside, an Iraqi musician was playing her own compositions on the piano.

The truer, deeper crisis began when Americans physically set foot on Iraqi soil.  When nothing seems certain, when soldiers can be seen on every corner, and each wields a weapon, when neighborhoods are battlefields, no amount of money ensues tranquility. 

The war on Iraq is not novel; the form of destruction is.  When we look back on the history of Iraq, we must acknowledge America's influence.  Long before the first bullets whizzed past the heads of innocent Iraqi civilians the United States worked to undermine the government it put in place with full knowledge that blameless people were being hurt.  Sanctions against Iraq secured an uncertain future for innocent civilians.  Survival was threatened.  Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people perished.  Among these half a million children.

Comprehensive Economic Sanctions: A Badly-Flawed Policy

When the Security Council first imposed sanctions on Iraq in 1990, many diplomats, scholars, and citizens believed that comprehensive economic, sanctions were innovative, benign, and non-violent. Some believed that sanctions offered an ethical foreign policy tool to combat threats to peace and security without causing unintended suffering.

It is now clear that comprehensive economic sanctions in Iraq have hurt large numbers of innocent civilians not only by limiting the availability of food and medicines, but also by disrupting the whole economy, impoverishing Iraqi citizens and depriving them of essential income, and reducing the national capacity of water treatment, electrical systems and other infrastructure critical for health and life. People in Iraq have died in large numbers. The extent of death, suffering, and hardship may have been greater than during the armed hostilities, especially for civilians, as we shall see in more detail below.  Comprehensive sanctions in Iraq, then, are not benign, non-violent, or ethical.

The 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war include a prohibition of economic sieges against civilians as a method of warfare. Ironically, legal consensus does not yet define economic sanctions as subject to these laws, which apply in warfare and which legally require belligerents to target military rather than civilian objectives. Sanctions operate in a hazy legal status between war and peace.  Unlike the dramatic, visible toll of military action, sanctions take their effect gradually, indirectly and with low visibility.

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

-- 60 Minutes (5/12/96)

Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's quote, calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children, has been much quoted in the Arabic press. It's also been cited in the United States in alternative commentary on the September 11 attacks (e.g., Alexander Cockburn, New York Press, 9/26/01).

But a Dow Jones search of mainstream news sources since September 11 turns up only one reference to the quote--in an op-ed in the Orange Country Register (9/16/01). This omission is striking, given the major role that Iraq sanctions play in the ideology of archenemy Osama bin Laden; his recruitment video features pictures of Iraqi babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of medicine (New York Daily News, 9/28/01). The inference that Albright and the terrorists may have shared a common rationale--a belief that the deaths of thousands of innocents are a price worth paying to achieve one's political ends--does not seem to be one that can be made in U.S. mass media.

It's worth noting that on 60 Minutes, Albright made no attempt to deny the figure given by Stahl--a rough rendering of the preliminary estimate in a 1995 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report that 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five had died as a result of the sanctions.  In general, the response from government officials about the sanctions' toll has been rather different: a barrage of equivocations, denigration of U.N. sources and implications that questioners have some ideological axe to grind (Extra!, 3-4/00).

It seems we forget how precious live is, unless or until death is delivered at our doorstep.  Many Americans look at the recent findings and think nothing of the numbers.  Nonetheless, I present the figures.  My hope is that your heart will be full.  Tiaerra Washington-Thomas may serve as a reminder.  Every life is dear.

Nearly a third of Iraqis need immediate emergency help as conflict masks humanitarian crisis, say Oxfam and [The NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq] NCCI

The violence in Iraq is overshadowing a humanitarian crisis, with eight million Iraqis - nearly one in three - in need of emergency aid, says a report released today by international agency Oxfam and NCCI, a network of aid organizations working in Iraq.

The agencies' report "Rising to the Humanitarian Challenge in Iraq" says although the appalling security situation is the biggest problem facing most ordinary Iraqis, the government of Iraq and other influential governments should do more to meet basic needs for water, sanitation, food and shelter.  According to the report:

Four million Iraqis - 15% - regularly cannot buy enough to eat.

70% are without adequate water supplies, compared to 50% in 2003.

28% of children are malnourished, compared to 19% before the 2003 invasion.

92% of Iraqi children suffer learning problems, mostly due to the climate of fear.

More than two million people - mostly women and children - have been displaced inside Iraq.

A further two million Iraqis have become refugees, mainly in Syria and Jordan.

As we go about our work and improve our life style, let us consider more than the cost of gas, or the quality of our neighborhood.  Please ponder, "No man is an island."  I ask each of us to bear in mind if my brother suffers, so too will I.  The death of one affects us all.  Please let us embrace life; work for peace, prosperity, and equality.  May our mourning extend to those we have yet to meet.  Teairra Washington-Thomas, may you rest in peace.  May your passing help guide us all.

Be Kind.
For everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.
  ~ Plato

Sources, Resources, References for Life . . .