| |
Policy Or Humorless Joke?
|
|
|
US Iraq Policy:
Policy or Humorless Joke?
|
|
by Sean Gonsalves
|
| |
If you want some real insight into the principles and workings of U.S. foreign policy, then a new book edited by Anthony Arnove is indispensable reading.
It's called "Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War" - a collaborative work destined to be studied by future scholars as the first book to grant a glimpse behind the veil of ideology and propaganda that shrouds the contemporary official record.
The State Department line is a familiar theme. We went to the Persian Gulf to defend freedom  and democracy, restore "stability in the region" and beat back Saddam Hussein - the second coming of Hitler; an ideologically convenient fact that somehow escaped everyone's notice when Hussein was a buddy of ours gassing all those Kurds.
You know our Kurdish brothers and sisters. They're the official reason we've been bombing Iraq just about every other day since 1998, patrolling the so-called no-fly zones. We blow up something in Iraq with such frequency that it's been relegated to the news brief sections of our newspapers.
Of course, you'll have to excuse the Kurds for not having shown proper gratitude for our services. They're busy trying to escape slaughter at the hands of our allies in Turkey, who exterminate them with weapons we sell the Turkish military. In fact, we've even allowed our Turkish friends to go into northern Iraq and kill Kurds in the Iraqi no-fly zone! Orwell would most certainly be amazed.
Imagine how safe Kurds must feel. "Is that an Iraqi bomb or an American-supplied ballistic missile? Why? Well, if it's an Iraqi bomb they'll pay for it, too. If not, only we pay for it - with our lives."
No doubt, head-in-the-sand apologists for the "free-market" will continue to talk about "globalization" as an inevitable nirvana; ignoring the stark fact that the current global market hierarchy is maintained with a mind-numbing amount of violence and deceit. All this with a straight face, mind you.
This is not a laughing matter, you might say. Well, after reading "Iraq Under Siege," the idea that our foreign policy planners are concerned about human rights will become a sick joke - a dark comedy, laughable even in the Communist councils of China.
Much disinformation has been spread concerning the oil-for-food program that the United Nations runs. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talks as if the food that the U.N. buys by selling some of Iraq's oil is enough to feed civilians.
Well, the guy who ran the oil-for-food program until he resigned a few years ago in protest of the sanctions, saying he refused to be part of genocide any longer, has a different take on the matter.
"Firstly, oil-for-food was never intended to actually resolve the humanitarian crisis. It was designed to stop further deterioration. It was designed to build on what the Iraqi government was already doing and is still doing. They have a separate food distribution program for those on fixed incomes, orphans, war widows and others, which has continued throughout," explains Denis Halliday.
The U.N. Security Council, Halliday says, has politicized the program, second-guessing the cost or need of the supplies that the Iraqi government requests.
"The young bureaucrats who sit on this committee in New York are not technical people. In fact, they don't want technical advice. So, for example, when the Iraqis asked for 500 ambulances, approved by the World Health Organization as minimal under the circumstances, these were initially blocked in their entirety and then slowly, over a period of six to nine months, were released - 100, 200 ambulances - really picayunish stuff, inexcusable," he says in an interview with David Barsamian.
Phyllis Bennis, an Institute for Policy Studies fellow and longtime journalist who has covered the Middle East, points out a much ignored aspect to U.N. Resolution 687, which started out as an order to dismantle Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. Recall that the U.S. official policy was no lifting of the sanctions until Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities had been rendered useless. That was done by 1997, and then the official U.S. policy switched. There will be no lifting of the sanctions until Hussein is out of office.
It's a policy that violates international law, but that's something policy planners pretend to care about when broken by official enemies.
"It's important to think about another aspect that often gets ignored. Besides the imposition of sanctions and dealing with weapons of mass destruction, 687 also calls for creation of a weapons of mass destruction-free zone, which means a nuclear weapons-free zone, throughout the Middle East," Bennis points out. This is another fact ignored by the media and avoided by the Clinton administration.
"That's very significant, because the U.S. refuses still to officially acknowledge Israel's nuclear arsenal. The United States has been the party primarily responsible for providing weapons to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel," she reports.
For 10 years now, we've had Iraq in the clenches of our iron-fist policy, ensuring that a whole generation of Iraqis will grow up deeply resenting America. The policy is also the reason we have absolutely no credibility as humanitarians or defenders of freedom on this volatile planet.
But don't take my word for it. Read the book (www.lbbs.org/sep/sep.htm to order it) and make up your own mind.
Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and syndicated columinist. He can be reached via email: sgonsalves@capecodonline.com
Copyright © 2000 Cape Cod Times
###
|
 Printer Friendly Version
E-Mail This Article
|
|
|
| |
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
|
|
