Excerpted from the Friday, August 11, 2000 Irish Times:
UN Sanctions Against Iraq Only Serve US Ambition
by Denis J. Halliday
Like many Irish readers, and others overseas who approached me requesting a response, I was shocked by the degree of over-simplification and misinformation contained in the article by the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, published in these pages (August 4th).
…US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ordains that the UN sanctions must continue. This despite their failure and human cost, as determined by UNICEF to be the death of some 5,000 children under five years of age each month, and that excludes teenagers, adults and the elderly also dying unnecessarily under the UN embargo. One can only assume that she calls for its continuation to meet American ambitions for suppression of Iraq and control of the Middle East.
The status quo sustained by US-driven sanctions has made for a certain stability within Iraq under Saddam Hussein as required by nervous neighbours. But this is combined with an instability outside of Iraq enabling the US, Britain and others to sell vast amounts of weapons to the Arab countries. Thus the US economy is thriving on arms sales with the resulting impoverishment of the Arab world.
In terms of Kuwait, Ms Albright is correct - the invasion was illegal
and the results horrible. Atrocities were committed. However, the atrocities
of the Kuwait invasion hardly justify the crimes committed by US troops
using depleted uranium, ploughing under live Iraqi troops and for the Basra
road massacre when in broad daylight US aircraft slaughtered thousands
of Iraqis in retreat from Kuwait.
Has Ms Albright forgotten the My Lai atrocity in Vietnam when US troops killed hundreds of innocent women and children of that village. Nothing justifies crimes against humanity regardless of the guilty but we need to remember our own failures.
MS ALBRIGHT is right to be concerned about the 605 Kuwaiti people missing since the Gulf War. They must be accounted for some day. She forgot to mention the 1,050 missing Iraqis in Kuwait, or that seeking the missing cannot justify the sustained dying of thousands each month under the UN embargo.
Ms Albright says Saddam Hussein is rebuilding the Iraqi military machine. I wonder which spies have yielded that information?
Regardless, we must be concerned as long as Baghdad is surrounded by armed and dangerous neighbours, armed by the US and others, such as Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia to name a few. The Iraqi excuse, were Ms Albright correct, would undoubtedly be strengthened by Israeli nuclear warheads, some undoubtedly aimed at Baghdad.
I am also sure that Ms Albright is right, Saddam Hussein would like to forget the use of chemical weapons, just as the US would like to forget the use of the atomic bomb on the Japanese and forget about the use of chemicals in Vietnam and depleted uranium in the Gulf War. Crimes against humanity abound on all sides.
Denis J. Halliday is former UN Assistant Secretary-General and head
of the Humanitarian Programme in Iraq.
© 2000 ireland.com
"FEW OF US CAN EASILY SURRENDER OUR BELIEF THAT SOCIETY MUST SOMEHOW MAKE SENSE. THE THOUGHT THAT THE STATE HAS LOST ITS MIND IS INTOLERABLE, AND SO THE EVIDENCE HAS TO BE INTERNALLY DENIED."
- Arthur Miller