I've been duped! But thanks to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, there's hope for me yet. "America has lost the propaganda war with Saddam. Period," he wrote back in February. This happened for many reasons, Friedman explained. "For one, Saddam totally outfoxed Washington in the propaganda war. All you hear and read in the media here is that the sanctions are starving the Iraqi people - which is true. But the U.S. counter-arguments that by complying with U.N. resolutions Saddam could get those sanctions lifted at any time are never heard," he wrote.
The amazing thing is: I wasn't duped by Saddam and his ministers of propaganda. I was hoodwinked by American and other Western sources of extraordinary integrity.
Following the war, Col. John Warden explained how military planners targeted Iraq's civilian 
infrastructure to provide "long-term leverage," in full knowledge that it "could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease."
Then in March 1991, the New York Times ran a front-page article on a U.N. report detailing how the war against Iraq had caused "near apocalyptic damage," and also "famines and epidemics." The report called for "massive life-supporting aid," warning that "time was short."
The story summarized the U.S. position on the sanctions - "...by making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people it will eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power."
With a little digging, I discovered that "uncomfortable" meant no electricity, no water, no sewage treatment systems, and epidemics caused by water-borne diseases for the Iraqi people, which led a Harvard study team to estimate 10 years ago that 170,000 Iraqi children would die because of the sanctions.
What really washed my brains was a 1992 survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Doctors from Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Oxford went to Iraq to study the sanctions' effect. They reported that due to the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure, 46,900 Iraqi children under the age of 5 died in the first eight months of 1991.
At that point, I was well on my way to dupe-dom - no doubt because "U.S. counter-arguments...are never heard." That being the unmitigated truth, ordinary Americans must be extremely obtuse because U.S. counter-arguments have been played like a broken record all over the news media, with U.S. officials blaming only Saddam.
"If he wants a different relationship...all he has to do is change his behavior," according to former President Clinton.
The well-read opinion pages of the "liberal" New York Times clarified the sanctions rationale. "The purpose of worldwide sanctions is to induce the overthrow of Saddam's genocidal regime," wrote William Safire.
"If you squeeze Iraq long enough, the Iraqi people will oust Saddam," said Friedman, who candidly explained the "logic of the sanctions."
Until Friedman woke me from my dogmatic slumber, I was foolishly asking: how are we not at all responsible for the intended consequences of the sanctions we imposed? If the sanctions are to "squeeze Iraq long enough" so that "the Iraqi people will oust Saddam," how come the Security Council resolutions imposing the sanctions say nothing about such a goal?
And, if the majority of Iraqis are forced to eke out a hand-to-mouth existence, how are they supposed to summon the fortitude to oust a dictator?
I find comfort in the knowledge I wasn't the only one duped. Denis Halliday, former U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, and his successor Hans von Sponeck both resigned in protest of the sanctions, calling them genocidal. Add to that list Scott Ritter, chief UNSCOM inspector in Iraq, the pope and 53 U.S. Catholic bishops.
Maybe the biggest casualty of "the war Saddam won" is The Economist. "If, year in, year out, the U.N. were systematically killing Iraqi children by air strikes, Western governments would declare it intolerable, no matter how noble the intention. They should find their existing policy just as unacceptable. In democracies, the end does not justify the means," the conservative Economist opined last year.
A week from today, the U.N. Security Council will vote on what the Bush administration is calling "new, smart sanctions."
"Sitting on the world's second-largest oil reserves, Iraq was once, politics aside, an advanced country. Now its living standards are on par with Ethiopia's; UNICEF confirms a 160 percent rise in Iraq's infant mortality rate since 1991; and the middle classes have disappeared," the Economist reported last month.
"Iraq needs massive investment to rebuild its industry, its power grids and its schools, and needs cash in hand to pay its engineers, doctors and teachers. None of this looks likely to happen under smart sanctions," the Economist continued.
Help us Mr. Friedman. We are being duped!
Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and syndicated columinist. He can be reached via email: sgonsalves@capecodonline.com
Copyright © 2001 Cape Cod Times
###
Printer Friendly Version
E-Mail This Article
